Behold the Tweisted Pencil. We are still on heroes.
Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
I don’t believe heros will ever go out of style. But that’s just my opinion.
We imagine that literary heroes can’t go out of style, but they can go extinct. Protagonist, okay, but heroes are missing.
Well, maybe it will be up to us to make sure they do not.
A Hero is lifted from the mob. A hero lives a mundane existence as do we all, until circumstance blossoms the heroic out of the mundane. The successful story focuses upon the period when the heroic is rising, for it is boring to focus upon the mundane which is the greater temporal reality. However, the mundane must be sprinkled into the plot, to make a contrast. If a story is boring, perhaps it lacks focus upon the temporal span of the heroic period and gets lost in the mundane.
In the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter books, I find it odd because Harry Potter, as hero, is not only flawed, but in fact a lot of his “heroism” is just dumb luck, almost like they are making fun of the idea.
Over time she does develop him into a likeable figure with an “heroic” sense of honor, but many of his actions aren’t heroic at all.
The Tolkien discussion is great. I think LOTR had three heroes; Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn. Each one exhibited a different trait of Christ. Frodo was crucified, bearing the weight of mankind’s sins (Frodo was spared at the last moment, a sign of Tolkien’s deep respect for Christ). Gandalf was the divine, the one from elsewhere walking among men. Aragorn was the man long predicted to come to his throne.
But, as mentioned, Tolkien rejected any notion that his story had these types or any others in them.
We’ve mentioned perfect heroes, and we’ve talked about flawed heroes. These arguments are slightly off focus. What makes a hero is sacrifice. We’ve mentioned Christ, he sacrificed his life to bring salvation.
Really great fictional heroes sacrifice to triumph. They have to pay a price for victory. All of the LOTR characters did. And perhaps sacrifice is what makes Spiderman superior to Superman and Batman; Spiderman’s personal life always suffers for his heroic actions.
Harry Potter pays the price of loneliness and isolation. Odysseus takes twenty years to get home. Arguably the best author of heroic fantasy, the late David Gemmell, writes some of the most absorbing fantasy novels, usually with larger-than-life heroes. His heroes always pay, or have paid, the price.
Real-life heroes, soldiers, cops, firemen, and so on, are typically called heroes when they have sacrificed life or limb for the public.
And, the everyday guy who raises a family, works all his (or her) life, plays by the rules, makes sure his family is sheltered, fed, and loved; this guy is a hero too. He’s put aside his desires to build a great life for others.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
You can give a hero all the bad habits, wrong motives, personality quirks, and immaturity in the world, and yet if he comes to the point of sacrifice and does what must be done for his cause, he has earned the right to be called "hero."
In fact, characters like that are the more intriguing for their flaws. And if you want to create a really interesting hero, introduce a character arc; make him change over the course of the story. If the particular mode of change actually becomes what enables his act of sacrifice, so much the better. =]
But Nefal, while it is often passive, can also be reflexive. For example, you can say ani nishmar, and it means either “I am guarded,” as in someone is guarding me, or “I am being careful,” as in I am guarding myself. For this, Hitpael would serve as well for this reflexive usage, but lacks the ambiguity. Ani mishtamer is “I am guarding myself.” Period. No other meaning is possible. Paul, on the other hand, is unambiguous. Ani shamur means “I am guarded” as in somebody else is guarding me and no room for reflexive doubts. So you can be either very precise using other forms and voices, or deliberately vague using Nefal.
You are absolutely right about nefal and the other verb tenses. Like I said, if you were sitting next to me in class, I would be copying your homework.
It really works in the musical. I remember when I saw it and he begins the small verse that would reveal his past crimes... I remember saying to myself, "you don't have to tell." And if he wanted only his happiness, he did not. But he wanted Cosette's happiness more, so he had to.
Sydney Carton has the same sacrifice. Because he is Charles Darnay's exact duplicate, he will exchange himself for Darnay and go to the guillotine in Darnay's place so Lucie Manette can be happy.
Samwise Gamgee's sacrifices abound throughout LOTR. In fact, he is far more interesting to read than Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf.
“A Hero is lifted from the mob. A hero lives a mundane existence as do we all, until circumstance blossoms the heroic out of the mundane. The successful story focuses upon the period when the heroic is rising, for it is boring to focus upon the mundane which is the greater temporal reality. However, the mundane must be sprinkled into the plot, to make a contrast. If a story is boring, perhaps it lacks focus upon the temporal span of the heroic period and gets lost in the mundane.”
That’s spot on. After the heroic period, though, when he goes back to the mundane everyday life, that itself must be transformed from what it was before. Now I understand what I was doing with my characters in United America: 2014 (by Ben Maxwell—buy it now!!) It starts out with the hero living in Manteo, NC, doing his everyday thing, separated from his wife, when he meets his old war buddy Percy from Gulf II, and the adventure begins. Percy later proves an evil conspirator, tries repeatedly to kill him and his pals, only to be ripped to shreds by the parents of a troop of boyscouts he had killed (believe me, it’s a long story). At the end, after all the adventures, he’s back in Manteo and reunited with wify, at the site of his demolished old house, trying to build a log cabin. All his old compatriates show up on time to help him birth his third son in the basement they are using to shelter themselves from Hurricane Percy. He’s back in the mundane, but now he has real friends, to whom he can give his back, and together they can handle anything.
That’s all that’s missing from your formula. At the end of it all, the hero has to be moved, made stronger/wiser somehow, and his life must change even if it returns to the mundane.
You’ve just described the novel formula.
You start here ——>
Stuff happens, you change,
And end up -——> here, a whole different place.
If you haven’t changed, it’s probably an episode of Star Trek.
:->
I’ve read Harry Potter from the beginning. A lot of dumb luck does fall his way, but there’s always a falling action at a critical moment that qualifies as “heroic”. Too rushed to do a book-by-book analysis, though, but that’s what I recall.
You can see Tolkien's love of ordinary folk in the way he writes all the hobbits, but especially Sam...the heroic gardener. Though I must admit, one of my favorite lines from the books (and the films) was:
"...Go back to the shadow. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun! You cannot pass!"
Fully prepared to make his own sacrifice, Gandalf draws a line in the sand against the Balrog of Morgoth.
“...it’s probably an episode of Star Trek”
Or some other serial, where all the storytelling is chained to a frame.
That was the beauty of Babylon 5...every character had an arc. G'kar and Londo each had a rich, rich story, and each was a hero.
“Or some other serial, where all the storytelling is chained to a frame.”
You’ve nailed one of the primary differences between movies and TV.
Will be here later today.
Hope the conversation about heroes continues.
I am a volunteer at a state natural area nearby -— a 6,000 acre ranch donated to ther state of Texas -— they don’t have the funds to clear trails etc. so they have a group of volunteers. I have promised to haul my horse over there today and accompany the ranger on the trails with a brush cutter. Will be here this evening.
Behold the Tweisted Pencil. We are still on heroes.
Jeez will I ever learn to spell-check?
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