In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate a rare beast in fiction: nonviolent heroes. Now, I don't mean characters who you wouldn't expect to be violent in the context of the story - your average romantic comedy, for example, is usually bereft of violence. Instead, I wanted to take some time to focus on a few of my favorite characters in fiction who either explicitly espouse a philosophy of nonviolence, or simply never use violence even in situations where we're trained by our culture to expect it.

Putting this list together was a little bit more challenging than I thought. Sad to say, but real life is actually a much richer source of nonviolent heroes than our fiction. Which is something we should think about. At any rate, here's my list of eight great nonviolent characters. Feel free to share your own heroes in the comments.


"He wouldn't fight and be fierce no matter what they did. He just sat and smelled. And the Banderilleros were mad and the Picadores were madder and the Matador was so mad he cried because he couldn't show off with his cape and sword." 

Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand was one of my favorites when I was a kid. Ferdinand was a bull who didn't like to run around and fight like the other bulls. He just liked to enjoy nature and smell the flowers. But one day, he was mistaken for a fierce bull and sent to the bullfighting ring. Suffice to say, he disappointed the crowd. This book was condemned by Francisco Franco and beloved by Gandhi, and I plan on sharing it with my own children.

Salvor Hardin

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

Salvor Hardin was one of the leaders of the Foundation in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Unusual for a politician - fictional or otherwise - he deplored the use of violence, pretending instead to use clever thinking to avoid violent confrontations. When the neighboring solar systems of the Foundation threatened them with war and tried to put military bases on his planet, Hardin was on several occasions able to thwart them. Even when he was ousted from office in favor of a political party that supported direct and violent action against the Foundation's neighbors, Hardin still worked to non-violently stop threats to the Foundation.

Hardin was one of Asimov's few characters that spoke in aphorisms, and the quote above, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent," became one of Asimov's personal credos.

Jean Valjean

"Why have not you told it? It is your fault, too. You save people's lives, and you hide it from them!" - Marius 

Jean Valjean is the hero of Victor Hugo's magnificent Les Miserables. A thief who spent 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for his family, Valjean would probably have ended up being another poor soul who ended up in a life of crime in 19th Century France. Instead, after being shown mercy by a priest, Valjean changed his ways and strove the rest of his life to be a better, merciful, and virtuous man. Despite being a man of great strength with the skills of his previous criminal life, Valjean spends the book performing acts of charity and mercy. Even when Valjean finds himself joining a violent rebellion, he doesn't harm anyone himself. The book makes clear that Valjean merely fired his gun above the heads of the opposing soldiers in hope of frightening them away. And when he is given the opportunity to kill his nemesis Javert, he instead spares Javert's life.



"Our final decision was to keep the series nonviolent. There would be a murder, of course, but it would be sanitized and barely seen. Columbo would never carry a gun. He would never be involved in a shooting or a car chase (he'd be lucky, in fact, if his car even started when he turned the key), nor would he ever have a fight." - Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link

Lieutenant Columbo, as portrayed by Peter Falk, was a brilliant police detective who walked into the halls of the rich and powerful, dressed with nothing but shabby clothes and his wits. I love watching episodes of Columbo because unlike modern TV police procedurals, where cops can't go to the bathroom without drawing a weapon, Columbo never even bothered to carry one. He didn't have to. His mind was all he needed.


"Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars." 

The runaway slave Jim in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is probably one of the best non-violent characters in literature. Despite having ample reason to employ violence - even in self-defense-he never does. As he and Huck traveled down the Mississippi, he didn't even hunt - he relied on Huck to do that. Over the course of the novel, there is plenty of violence, a lot of guns, and a lot of death. But at the center of it all is the simple decency of Jim. Jim's more than just a friend to Huck - he's a father. And a much better father than Huck's own Pap, who beat and isolated Huck repeatedly. What's more, Jim isn't just nonviolent - he's also compassionate. Given the choice to escape to freedom or help Tom Sawyer, who had been shot in the leg, he didn't even hesitate.

It's no wonder that wonder Huck Finn sought to escape being "sivilized."

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