Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams
What I always think of as the classic example of this (and the book that broke my heart when I read it in junior high school) is Shane
"I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone"
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
This kind of hero doesn't necessarily choose to be alone. He's doomed to his loneliness, like it or not.
"A man is what he is, Bob, and there's no no breaking the mold. I tried that and I've lost. But I reckon it was in the cards from the moment I saw a freckled kid on a rail up the road there and a real man behind him, the kind that could back him for the chance another kid never had ... There's no going back from a killing, Bob. Right or wrong, the brand sticks and there's no going back." Shane, Jack Schaefer
Frequently the protagonist doesn't like the loneliness at all, and seeks to find the companionship that seems to come so easily to everyone else.
"Each passing second his mind expanded more, his whole body felt warm with the richness of pure joy. The sky was blue and cloudless the sun was bright, and all the world was fair! It was like an intolerable weight lifting. All these years everything had depended on him. The great weapon he held in trust for that future world he sometimes dreamed of, held suspended like a monstrous sword of Damocles over the destiny of human and slan alike by the single, fragile threat of his life, and now, there would be two life threads to control it." Jommy Cross, Slan
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone"
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
It can never last, though:
"One touch on one button, and he would have been blasted into nothingness. But Jommy Cross made no move, spoke no word. Colder, harder grew his mind, as he sat there. His bleak gaze stared impersonally at the man, then at the dead body. And finally the measured thought came that the possessor of atomic energy could have no heart, no love, no normal life. In all that world of men and slans who hated so savagely, there was for him only the relentless urgency of his high destiny."
I could go on. I have a least an arm's length list of books based on this kind of character, but I want to hear what you think. Of all the literary characters who walk alone, who's your favorite?
Books: Shane
Slan
Music: Boulevard of Broken Dreams
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