Is Charles Ramsey a hero?

By now we should all know who Charles Ramsey is. He shot to instant fame when he gave an honest and very animated account of his rescue of Amanda Berry; one of four females held captive in the house of Ariel Castro.

Ramsey kicked Castro’s front door in when he heard and saw Amanda Berry trying to escape, after approximately ten years of torturous captivity. It goes without saying that Ramsey’s deeds were nothing short of heroic. His selflessness ended years of rape, forced-imprisonment, physical and mental abuse, and a plethora of horrors we are yet to hear about, and others which we won’t.

The twist came a few days after Ramsey’s live news interview, that he had a criminal past. Ramsey was previously convicted of three separate accounts of domestic abuse against his ex-wife, which resulted in him going to prison, and rightly so.

What I personally find interesting is that up to the few seconds before Ramsey heard Amanda Berry’s cries for help, he was NOT a hero. He was a convicted felon and a former wife beater. But in the moment he put his foot through Ariel Castro’s door, he rose out of that mire and became something more.

What he did was heroic, but I would not call Charles Ramsey a hero. 

Heroes are pure, and good, and constant in their ideals – hence why they are so rare and mainly exist on the screen or in written fiction. Search long and hard enough and you will find stains on almost anything - or anyone.

Charles Ramsey is an anti-hero, and that is by no means a derogatory term. Anti-heroes are flawed, they are broken, they are human, and they are real. 

His past is blemished and his moral principals are likely conflicted. But even though he was once a villain, it should not be forgotten that he did something spectacular this week, something extremely benevolent.

He deserves all of the praise he gets.