A hero (Greek: ἥρως), in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demi-god, the offspring of a mortal and a deity.[1] Later, hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters that, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice, that is, heroism, for some greater good, originally of martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.
The literal meaning of the word is "protector", "defender" or
"guardian" and etymologically it is thought to be cognate with the name
of the goddess Hera, the guardian of marriage; the postulated original forms of these words being *ἥρFως, hērwōs, and *ἭρFα, Hērwā, respectively. It is also thought to be a cognate of the Latin verb servo (original meaning: to preserve whole) and of the Avestan verb haurvaiti (to keep vigil over), although the original Proto-Indoeuropean root is unclear.
Stories of heroism may serve as moral examples. In classical antiquity, hero cults, veneration of deified heroes such as Heracles, Perseus, or Achilles, played an important role in Ancient Greek religion. Later emperors employed hero worship for their own apotheosis, that is, cult of personality.
Classical hero cults
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Hero cults could be of the utmost political importance. When Cleisthenes divided the Athenians into new demes for voting, he consulted Delphi about what heroes he should name each division after. According to Herodotus, the Spartans attributed their conquest of Arcadia to their theft of the bones of Orestes from the Arcadian town of Tegea.
Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods. Thus Heracles's name means "the glory of Hera",
even though he was tormented all his life by the queen of the gods.
This was even more true in their cult appearances. Perhaps the most
striking example is the Athenian king Erechtheus, whom Poseidon killed for choosing Athena over him as the city's patron god. When the Athenians worshiped Erechtheus on the Acropolis, they invoked him as Poseidon Erechtheus.
In the Hellenistic Greek East, dynastic leaders such as the Ptolemies or Seleucids were also proclaimed heroes. This was an influence on the later, Roman apotheosis of their emperors.
Analysis
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The classic hero often came with what Lord Raglan (a descendant of the FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan)
termed a "potted biography" made up of some two dozen common traditions
that ignored the line between historical fact and mythology. For
example, the circumstances of the hero's conception are unusual; an
attempt is made by a powerful male at his birth to kill him; he is
spirited away; reared by foster-parents in a far country. Routinely the
hero meets a mysterious death, often at the top of a hill; his body is
not buried; he leaves no successors; he has one or more holy sepulchres.
Most European indigenous religions feature heroes in some form.[dubious – discuss]
The validity of the "hero" in historical studies
- Further information: Philosophy of history and Great man theory
Philosopher Hegel gave a central role to the "hero", personalized by Napoleon, as the incarnation of a particular culture's Volksgeist, and thus of the general Zeitgeist. Thomas Carlyle's 1841 On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History also accorded a key function to heroes and great men in history. Carlyle centered history on the biography of a few central individuals such as Oliver Cromwell or Frederick the Great.
His heroes were political and military figures, the founders or
topplers of states. His history of great men, of geniuses good and
evil, sought to organize change in the advent of greatness.
Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position were rare in the second part
of the 20th century. Most philosophers of history contend that the
motive forces in history can best be described only with a wider lens
than the one he used for his portraits. For example, Karl Marx argued that history was determined by the massive social forces at play in "class struggles", not by the individuals by whom these forces are played out. After Marx, Herbert Spencer
wrote at the end of the 19th century: "You must admit that the genesis
of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which
has produced the race
in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has
slowly grown....Before he can remake his society, his society must make
him."
Thus, as Foucault pointed out in his analysis of the historical and political discourse, history was mainly the science of the sovereign, until its reversion by the "historical and political popular discourse".
The Annales School, led by Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel would contest the exaggeration of the role of individual subjects
in history. Indeed, Braudel distinguished various time-scales, one
accorded to the life of an individual, another accorded to the life of
a few human generations, and the last one to civilizations, by which geography, economics and demography play a role considerably more decisive than that of individual subjects. Foucault's conception of an "archeology" or Althusser's work were attempts at linking together these various heterogeneous layers composing history.
Heroic myth
The concept of a story archetype of the standard "hero's quest" or monomyth pervasive across all cultures is somewhat controversial. Expounded mainly by Joseph Campbell,
it illustrates several uniting themes of hero stories that despite
vastly different peoples and beliefs hold similar ideas of what a hero
represents.
Some argue that while there may be many stories that fit the
monomyth, the belief in such a truly ubiquitous form may be due in part
simply to neglecting those that do not and/or do.
Folk and fairy tales
Vladimir Propp, in his analysis of the Russian fairy tale, concluded that a fairy tale had only eight dramatis personae, of which one was the hero,[2] and his analysis has been widely applied to non-Russian tales. The actions fell into a hero's sphere included
- departure on the quest
- reacting to the test of the donor
- marrying the princess
He distinguished between seekers and victim-heroes. A villain
could initiate the issue by kidnapping the hero or driving him out;
these were victim heroes. On the other hand, the villain could rob the
hero, or kidnap someone close to him, or, without the villain's
intervention, the hero could realize that he lacked something and set
out to find it; these heroes are seekers. Victims may appear in tales
with seeker heroes, but the tale does not follow them both.[3]
Operatic hero
In opera and musical theatre, the hero/ heroine is often played by a tenor/soprano (more vulnerable characters are played by lyric voices while stronger characters are portrayed by spinto or dramatic voices.)
The modern fictional hero
"Hero" or "heroine" is sometimes used to simply describe the protagonist of a story, or the love interest, a usage which can conflict with the more-than-human expectations of heroism. William Makepeace Thackeray gave Vanity Fair the subtitle A Novel without a Hero.[4] The larger-than-life hero is a more common feature of fantasy (particularly sword and sorcery and epic fantasy) than more realist works.[5]
In modern movies,
the hero is often simply an ordinary person in extraordinary
circumstances, who, despite the odds being stacked against him or her,
typically prevails in the end. In some movies (especially action movies), the hero may exhibit characteristics such as superhuman strength and endurance that sometimes makes him nearly invincible. Often a hero in these situations has a foil, the villain,
typically a charismatic evildoer who represents, leads, or himself
embodies the struggle the hero is up against. Post-modern fictional
works have fomented the increased popularity of the anti-hero, who does not follow common conceptions of heroism. [6]
Hero-as-self
It has been suggested in an article by Roma Chatterji that the hero or more generally protagonist
is first and foremost a symbolic representation of the person who is
experiencing the story while reading, listening or watching; thus the
relevance of the hero to the individual relies a great deal on how much
similarity there is between the two. The idea of "identifying" with the
hero takes on a very real meaning, in that the hero/protagonist becomes
our only key to becoming part of the story rather than remaining merely
an observer. If the hero is one with which the observer can't identify
very well, the story can seem inaccessible, distant or even insincere.
Conversely, insomuch as the reader or viewer relates to and is
therefore capable of becoming the hero, they can feel pangs of remorse
at the hero's defeats, and relish in his or her triumphs.
The most compelling reason for the hero-as-self interpretation of
stories and myths is the human inability to view the world from any
perspective but a personal one. The almost universal notion of the hero
or protagonist and its resulting hero identification allows us to
experience stories in the only way we know how: as ourselves.
One potential drawback of the necessity of hero identification means
that a hero is often more a combination of symbols than a
representation of an actual person. In order to appeal to a wide range
of individuals, the author often relegates the hero to a "type" of
person which everyone already is or wishes themselves to be: a "good"
person; a "brave" person; a "self-sacrificing" person. The most
problematic result of this sort of design is the creation of a
character so universal that we can all identify with somewhat, but none
can identify with completely. In regard to the observer's personal
interaction with the story, it can give the feeling of being "mostly
involved," but never entirely.
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