It is often said that Robert E. Howard’s Conan is an anti-hero. This is true depending on how one defines anti-hero. In the Classical terminology an anti-hero meant a person lacking in courage and valor unlike Achilles or Hercules who were heroes. Conan has his faults but he is definitely not lacking in those traits. He is anti-hero in the more modern sense of a morally ambiguous badass. (This is ironically what most of the heroes of mythology were.)

There are those who say Conan is not that complex of a character. I tend to say he is more complex than he’s given credit for. It is true that the protagonists of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky or Joyce are more complex than any of Howard’s protagonists, but Howard’s characters are not the one-note caricatures that critics accuse him of creating. Howard was also writing a very different type of story than Dostoevsky or Joyce. (Of the three Shakespeare is the closest to Howard, since some of the Bard’s plays like MacBeth or King Lear have a certain amount of blood-and-thunder.)

Conan is more complex than the characters of most pulp fiction and even some of those of “literary” fiction. This is particularly true when it comes to his morality. Conan is very much a mixture of good and bad traits. He is capable of bloody deeds and acts of mercy. One has to look at “Tower of the Elephant” to see this.

In this story, Conan is a thief (bad) who kills a man in a bar room brawl (also bad, though the victim isn’t terribly sympathetic.) Yet, Conan displays a great deal of daring (good) in his decision to rob the titular tower alone. He also shows a great deal of competence in doing so. Competence is a virtue (and an underrated one in my opinion.) Even more interesting, he shows mercy to an alien being that is held captive in the tower. He even plays a part in this being’s vengeance.

Conan is perhaps at his moral lowest in “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” when he pursues Atali for rape. This is a story that can make one uncomfortable. The thing about it is that there is strong implication that Conan is under a spell and not in his right mind. There is even an interpretation that the whole thing is a dream of the wounded Conan. While obviously there is no excuse for rape in the real world, these make the situation more complicated. It is worth noting that Atali is whisked away before the deed is done. This makes me think Howard did not write it as some sort of rape fantasy.

It also has to be mentioned that in later stories Conan scorns rape. In “Red Nails” he tells Valeria, who killed a would be rapist, that he would have done it himself if she had not. Conan, in later stories, is fairly chivalrous toward women. In his letters, Howard talks about the natural protective feelings men have towards women. Because of this Howard has been accused of sexism. The thing is Howard also created women like Valeria, Belit, Dark Agnes and Red Sonya of Rogatino who could take care of themselves. I would even say that Conan prefers Valeria and Belit to the cringing slave girls.     

It’s not that he could not be rough with women in certain circumstances. In “Rogues in the House,” he throws a lover who betrayed him into the mud, but that is still better than the man who was with her, who he disembowels.

“Rogues in the House” also shows Conan’s less noble side. He is again working as a thief and even accepts a contract to kill a man. Conan may be protective of women, but he has no such compunctions about men. While he said to be the most honest character in the story because he steals and kills in the open, he does steal and kill. He is at times a thief, a pirate and a mercenary who hires out to the highest bidder.

It seems that Conan’s actions, both good and bad, are instinctual. He probably could not articulate a code if he wanted to, but he does seem to abide by one. He is different than Howard’s other character Solomon Kane whose Puritanism keeps him on the straight and narrow. He is also different than Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane who does not seem to have any limits whatsoever.

Conan is by instinct a violent man. Violence, in fact, is a major theme in the work of Robert E. Howard. Whether violence is wrong or not is dependent on the situation. It is always regrettable, but sometimes necessary. There is a major moral difference between a man who uses violence to defend his family and the man who is attacking said family. Even Jesus, who said turn the other cheek, was willing to use violence to run moneylenders out of the temple. Conan uses violence for both good and bad ends. He is both the raider and protector.

Conan to certain degree has a character arc. He starts as an upstart thief but eventually he becomes a surprisingly responsible king. This arc is obscure because the stories are told out of chronological order, but roughly he becomes more responsible as he grows older. As king, he is usurper which in fiction is usually shown as bad, but in this case the original king was mad. Conan’s loyalty to those under him and to his comrades should be taken in account, though he seems to have no loyalty to anyone in station above him. In “Queen of the Black Coast” Conan’s loyalty to a friend causes him to cleave in the skull of a judge and have to flee.

His darkest aspect is that he represents the barbarians that prey on civilization when it becomes decadent. Howard believed that civilization is more hypocritical than barbarianism, but from the view of a civilized person, however hypocritical, Conan is a threat.

Conan does fight on the side of civilization in “Beyond the Black River,” but merely because he has been hired to do so. In fact, what makes him an effective combatant is his barbarism. In the story, civilization is rolled back by the barbaric Picts. This is the story where the famous quote about civilization being a quirk of fate and barbarism triumphing comes from.

I do not know if that’s true, but I do know that Rome fell to the Vandals and China to the Mongols, groups deemed barbarians by their opponents. I think it is hard to determine what exactly a barbarian is. Cultures deemed barbaric on close inspection are very complicated. Genghis Khan, though bloodthirsty, was a shrewd man. Even the arts, often seen as the fruits of civilization, are well represented in these cultures. There are few things as captivating as the Norse Sagas. For the record, when one reads the debate between Howard and Lovecraft about the virtues of barbarism versus civilization, Howard’s beliefs are extremely complex and nuanced.

What I do know is that the softer “civilized” virtues are supported by the “barbaric” ones. Orwell talks about “people sleeping soundly because rough men stand ready.” Theodore Roosevelt warned that if we lose the barbaric virtues we lose the civilized ones. I think they are right, which is probably why we read Howard.