*Spoil alert for anyone who has not seen/finished The Office*
“The key feature of an antihero is a character who is our primary point of ongoing narrative alignment, but whose behavior and beliefs provoke ambiguous, conflicted, or negative moral allegiance” (142).
Freezing a cat to death, causing a heart attack from creating a fake fire, a thirst for power and dominance, sleeping with a married woman, and cutting the face of a CPR training doll. These are just a few traits that could be used to describe The Office (2005) character, Dwight K. Schrute. At first, the character seems annoying and unlovable, but by the end of the show, Dwight’s character transformation has caused us to be in tears of joy for the happiness he has found.
In season one of The Office, Dwight is part time farmer and assistant to the regional manager (although he refers to himself without the ‘to the’) at the Scranton paper company, Dunder Mifflin. He is an obedient suck up to his boss, Michael Scott. Dwight is seen in many scenes closely following Michael or trying his best to spend time with Michael. This could be simply because he finds Michael to be an interesting person… or could be to help him gain more power and control over the office. Anytime his title is brought up, Dwight tries his best to be noted as second in command but is almost always corrected by Michael. Dwight craves dominance over his coworkers and is honored to accept any task given to him (if it’ll boost his thirst for authority).
Dwight has a very stern and monotone voice when speaking to anyone. His lack of social skills are evident when trying to interact with his co workers. Although Dwight seems almost robotic in his interactions, he does however find romance in the office (however this doesn’t mean he’s completely lost his lack in positive morals). Angela Martin, the stuck up accountant at Dunder Mifflin. Their relationship begins as a very secret office romance with hardly any interactions in public. During the episode “The Fun Run” (S4:E1, Netflix 34:59-36:23), Angela asks Dwight to check in on her sick cat. However after seeing the cat, “A farmer does what city folk don’t have the stomach to do”, Dwight euthanizes and then freezes her cat. This intense moment leads to Angela breaking up with Dwight. She eventually becomes engaged to their coworker, Andy. This causes Dwight to feel very emotional for a while but not for long. Their co worker, Phyllis finds Dwight and Angela hooking up. This affair goes on for the entire engagement and eventually ends it. After Andy is out of the picture, Dwight realizes he wants a child and asks Angela to be the mother. Him and Angela sign an elaborate contract including how the baby will be raised and Angela’s diet while pregnant. Within this relationship, Dwight does not reciprocate the romantic feelings Angela has towards him.
Although all of these moments seem more villainous than anti-hero, there are moments of relative morality that remind us that Dwight is also a hero.
Dwight’s co worker Pam ends things with her fiance, Roy, and tells him about an office crush she has on Jim. Later, Roy storms into the office looking for Jim but before he can cause any harm, Dwight pepper sprays Roy and basically saves Jim’s life. When Jim starts dating and Pam becomes heartbroken, Dwight is the one there to comfort her (although he does believe this sadness is from an assault of PMS).
Dwight isn’t close to being Batman or Sherlock, but he still is an antihero. There are many moments where Dwight’s morals are questionable. He shows his emotions and describes his goals. We find an alignment with him as the series goes on. We feel his heartbreak after Angela gets engaged, we feel his excitement when he finally becomes Regional Manager, and we feel his overwhelming love when him and Angela both finally admit their feelings for one another, finishing the series with an oddly beautiful wedding.
Best Dwight Moments (Season 1)
Failed CPR Training
Fire Drill
Sierra Larsen 11/21/17
COMM 3110: Television Genres 
Sierra,
This is a show that I just have not gotten into and do not really know much about, but your post definitely lays a good framework for the anti-hero. The comparative element you added about Batman and Sherlock is an interesting retrospect because we typically see an anti-hero as a well off and prominent person. While that may be a trend, this example is spot on in terms of what anti-heroes bring to the table. Thank you for your post, it was a good example for this blog post.
Jeremy
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Hi Sierra, your blog post on the character of Dwight Schrute from The Office is a perfect representation of Mittell’s description of an anti-hero. According to the book, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, Mittell classifies an anti-hero as a character who is “unsympathetic, morally questionable, or villainous” (Mittell, 2015). Schrute embodies all of these qualities in the examples you’ve given. He is unsympathetic toward his co-workers when they refuse to listen to his safety protocol. Rather than give them the benefit of the doubt, Schrute goes to great lengths by starting a fire and risking his colleagues lives just to prove his point. Killing his girlfriend’s sick cat without her permission is morally questionable, and his villainous qualities can be seen through his determination for power and willingness to betray his boss for it.
Despite all of Schrute’s negative qualities most viewers seem to form an attachment to his character. In Mittell’s argument about anti-heros and alignment, he claims that “the more we know about a character through revelations of backstory, relationships, and interior thoughts, the more likely that we will come to regard them as an ally in our journey through the storyworld” (Mittell, 2015). This quote helps to explain why viewers tend to rationalize Schrute’s insensitive behavior. It is revealed earlier on in the series that Schrute grew up with his family on a beet farm. This farm upbringing helps the audience to see Schrute’s behavior from another perspective. Although killing a cat seems inexcusable, viewers are able to forgive Schrute because he was taught that it was ethical to kill suffering animals on the farm. Through his and anti-social personality traits and understandable backstory, Schrute makes for a great exemplar of a beloved anti-hero.
Julie Taddeo
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The hilarious memes in this blog post go to show that Dwight is a lovable character for his quirky and most of the time questionable actions. I agree that Dwight is an excellent antihero. There are so many examples of where Dwight finds himself in conflicted situations. He, of course, always chooses to do what most audience members would deem as aligning with “negative moral allegiance”. What I find interesting, is how the developers and writers of the show create his character as an antihero. How can a character that has all of these morally questionable ideals connect with the audience? I believe The Office does this through humor and familiarity. We get a sense of where Dwight comes from when we visit the beet farm. He is always talking about his simple upbringing and I think this justifies some of his actions to us because we can understand and empathize with his decision making skills. This understanding of his background leads us into the current narrative of the television show. Without this character development, I am not sure if we would respond to him as a character in the way that we do.
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I totally agree, we would not enjoy him as much without his character arc. Dwight is a very unique anti-hero. I feel like most of the ones mentioned by Mittell drew us to them BECAUSE of their evil traits. We were interested in why they did these things and what they would do next. But with Dwight the opposite is true. We are drawn to him because of his more “human” traits. His arc and depth does draw us closer to him as a person. However with this arc we get more good and bad. The more we learn about Dwight the more his “hero” traits and “anti-hero” traits expand.
-Sierra
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I think this is a very interesting look at a character that isn’t often thought of when “hero”, “villain” and “anti-hero” comes up. The Office, being in the style of a documentary, gets into the minds of the characters which allows for characters like Dwight to really expand and go past his almost villainous character. As his character gets expanded, it becomes very clear that Dwight is someone with an extremely strong sense of loyalty. While this doesn’t exclude him from being a villain, his actions for the greater good do make him a bit more like other anti-heroes we’ve looked at like Jack Bauer. The biggest difference is, Dwight’s greater good isn’t the safety of America or the world but rather his greater good is the success of Dunder Mifflin. He strives to make his employees better (although due to his social ineptitude, it often plays out like the fire alarm sequence) but he genuinely cares about the success of Dunder Mifflin and will do anything to make their success greater. While it’s a very odd choice, I think Dwight is a fantastic example of an anti-hero for his villainous actions that are intended to serve his own greater good.
-Donnie Wood
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