Competent man
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
The competent man or competent woman is a stock character who can do anything perfectly, or at least exhibits a very wide range of abilities and knowledge, making him a form of polymath. While not the first to use such a character type, the heroes (and heroines) of Robert A. Heinlein's fiction are generally competent men/women, and one of Heinlein's characters Lazarus Long gives a good summary of requirements:
- "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
- — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
The competent man, more often than not, is written without explaining how he achieved his wide range of skills and abilities, especially as true expertise typically suggests practical experience instead of learning through books or formalized education alone. While not implausible with older or unusually long lived characters, when such characters are young it is often not adequately explained as to how they acquired so many skills at an early age. It would be easy for a reader to form the impression that the competent man is just basically a superior sort of human being, like a Nietzschean Ubermensch, or possibly the hero-entrepreneurs of Schumpeter or Rand.
Examples
- Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, from the comic Fantastic Four
- Sherlock Holmes
- Adam Reith, from Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure series
- Aloysius Pendergast, from the fiction of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
- Batman
- Cyrus Smith from Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island and other protagonists of this author
- Doc Savage
- Derek Flint
- Samurai Jack
- James Bond
- Ryo Saeba
- Indiana Jones
- Tony Stark
- John Galt, from Atlas Shrugged
- Yoko Tsuno
- Many of Alfred Hitchcock's early protagonists
- Many of Clive Cussler's protagonists, for example Dirk Pitt.
- Many of Neal Stephenson's novels
- MacGyver
- Jarod
- Peter Wimsey
- P. G. Wodehouse's Psmith, and Jeeves
- Stile, from Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series
- Francisco d'Anconia, from Atlas Shrugged.
- The Stainless Steel Rat, hero of Harry Harrison's series of the same name.
- Westley in The Princess Bride
- Gordon Freeman, protagonist of the Half-Life video game series.
- Characters in The Matrix are able to learn many skills in a few seconds by download to their brains.
- Nicole Des Jardins (Rama II and its sequels by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee), is an example of a competent woman.