The Brooding Hero

Tabitha Day
Nov 1
3 min read

Painted image of a brooding man, picture from Pixabay/u_2aedf1m2c6 — A Classic Brooder

I have to confess, the brooding hero is just my type – on the page, that is. In real life, there’s nothing more irritating than a tight-lipped man who won’t tell you what he’s been up to for the last three days and why he didn’t answer his phone. That’s not deep and mysterious; that’s just being shady. But a brooding hero in a book? Completely different story.

He Is All Action

The brooding hero doesn’t talk about what he’s going to do – he just does it.

I used to have a boyfriend who was all gunna, gunna, gunna. I’m gunna do this, I’m gunna do that. And guess what? He didn’t do any of it. All talk, no action. Incredibly frustrating for me, who had my hopes raised and then dashed so many times. I bought into the big talk more than once – more fool me.

I read once that when we see someone's potential; we are seeing what we would do in their situation. Therefore, you should not fall in love with the vision of someone who might achieve x, y, and z in the future, because you're just falling in love with your own dreams and aspirations. You think he's going to be a great doctor; he hasn't even applied to med school - but he talks about it a lot.

Perhaps this is why I am not a fan of bragging about what one is doing or what one intends to do. I never tell anyone my plan because if it doesn’t get done, then I don’t have to apologise, make excuses, or suffer the guilt of failure. I like to present a fully finished thing that no one knew I was working on, rather like a magician yanking out a bouquet of flowers from his sleeve. Voila! And if it doesn’t get done, then, oh well. Who knew anyway?

A brooding hero is all action. He doesn’t skite or pontificate. He doesn’t bang on about things he might do. He just does it.

He Is Deep

A brooding hero doesn’t brood about boring things, like a sports team losing a match, or a scratch on his car. He broods about big things, like the loss of his mother when he was four, or the unfair rise of his mortal enemy to the throne, or the death of his favourite horse in the Swamps of Sadness. Big, deep things; tragic memories of his past, which knit his heavy brows together as he twitches his cloak around him before disappearing into the fog swirling across the moors.

Swoon.

He broods because he is contemplating the agony of what life has done to him, and the pain of his own life choices. There lies his sense of vulnerability, the yawning hole within him that is crying out to be filled – preferably with a bubbly ray of sunshine who can lift him out of himself and make him realise that his past may have been tragic, but the future is so much brighter; a gleam of gold amongst tarnished grey.

Perhaps that is the attraction? That he can be helped, and that he need brood no more?

Once Was A Brooder

But then, what is the attraction of a Hero-Formerly-Known-As-Brooding? That’s just a normal person. Should he only brood when he is with the heroine? But then, she might suspect that she is the cause of the broodiness. That won’t do much for her sense of self-worth if her boyfriend is as happy as a blackbird elsewhere and turns into a scowling misery-guts as soon as he sets foot through her front door.

What happens when one is attracted to a brooding man, fills the hole of his vulnerability and makes him happy, thus inadvertently turning him into a cheerful man that one is no longer attracted to? What a waste of time.

Should one pick a brooding man and keep him broody? Just knock him down with a few well-placed insults at breakfast, or delete the business project he’s been working on, or cut holes in his favourite pieces of clothing? That seems a little, well … unhinged.