This article raises some fascinating points about the essential role of heroes in earlier generations vs. today.
It made me think of how the musical "Epic" approaches the hero story of Odysseus through a modern, "post-hero" lens. "Epic" largely concerns itself with the moral quandaries of mercy vs. ruthlessness, of how a life of violently fighting against his foes changes and scars Odysseus and his crew. But the original Homeric poem doesn't tackle any of these modern moral questions. Back then, it was a fundamental understanding of society that the world was full of people and monsters and elements trying to kill you, that men were supposed to be warriors, and that warriors fought and killed and tricked and outwitted their opponents, and were to be lauded and celebrated for their courage and heroics.
I'm very grateful that we no longer live in a world requiring every man to regularly fight to defend his town and village. But we do need a return to celebrating and lauding heroic qualities.
The ‘knight in shining armor’ trope was already satirized back at the start of the 17th century with Don Quixote. It’s a shame, really, but worse if ever the type of hero story should be limited, regardless of the age. I vote for both, crusaders and pilgrims.
For story purposes, at least, I think we have to make a distinction between virtuous and heroic. For story purposes, you generally want some moment of crisis where the risks are high to create the clear heroic moment. Steady, life-long, virtuous, self-giving behavior does not necessarily produce such moments. (Which is why most adventure stories are about men, since steady, life-long, virtuous, self-giving behavior is more characteristic of women than men.)
In life we do tend to call all such self-giving behavior heroic, which is perfectly fair. But in story terms the structure of a heroic tale demands something more bold, a moment of extreme danger. It is worth noting that whistleblowers are often secondary characters in fiction, protected by the hero rather than being then hero.
That said, there are other motives for the activities you mention. Crusading environmentalists are often attention seeking rather than pursuing any kind of rational policy change. Lawyers often do pro-bono work as a form of PR, never risking either their lives or their fortunes. The motives of pro-life councilors are much less mixed, but again, their activity is quiet and steady. It does not have the profile of a hero story.
Ultimately, stories simplify reality. There is a well-defined shape to the action and characters tend to be much more simple and clear in their motives. It is hard to map story tropes onto people in real life. Their lives can be much more random and their motives can be much more mixed.
Definitely an interesting question. I think I tend to agree that society needs heroes, but realistically speaking, heroes as we use them in fiction don't truly exist. Or maybe rarely exist. Real life is more complicated than there is good and there is bad. I've not seen much, if any, of that show "The Boys", but it is my understanding that Homelander is beloved of the masses and seen as a hero when in reality he is the opposite.
Life is a lot like that.
This is probably the historian in me, but nuance matters. I can say that Wyatt Earp was heroic in that is avenged his brother's death at the hands of the Clantons, and I can also say that he was a cheater at cards, a bad husband, and murder working outside the law. Bad people CAN do good things, and Good people CAN do bad things. Idolizing real and complex people as heroes leads to...issues...
In FICTION, however, we have a different story (see what I did there?).
I do believe there is a dire need to return to the idea of heroes in fiction, and I actually think we are seeing that movement. Fiction can provide ideals to strive for while being realistically complex or unreaslistically less complex. As a teen, fiction went throught this "Dark and Gritty" phase which produced the best Batman movie ever made, but little else. I think maybe we've seen the death of Dark and Gritty with Snyder's DC movies being laid to rest.
There is also the whole "world saving" problem, in that I personally don't care at all about saving the world in fiction anymore. Likely a byproduct of reading far too many Pulp short stories, I NEED my stories to have lower, more personal stakes. I need heroics I can relate to.
I just finished a story called "The Cure" by JD Newcom in a 1930 issue of Adventure (writing a post about it as we speak), and while the main character does accomplish something martially heroic, he also humbles himself in the process. I will likely never fight a pitched battle against Berbers on horseback, but I can recognize and strive toward the heroic ideal of being humble and not exaggerating my accomplishments.
The real world will forever be complicated and will likely grow more-so. If approaching individuals honestly and thoroughly, the idea of a true "Hero" living on planet Earth right now likley has no exemplar. If it does, we don't know who they are. I'd much rather my fiction provide tanglible, relateable examples of heroics (packaged in two-fisted adventure) that I can strive for in my life. That's where fiction excels.
This has grown long and is rambling, so I'll stop. Hopefully my point comes across.
Wonderful article thank you. I think though, the need for heroes to be on the outside is less a function of our times and perhaps more just a function of story telling itself. Stories crave problems, it is their nightmare fuel, and having a billionaire who doesn't care about money and hides in a cave wearing a bat costume to mask his trauma is just so much more interesting than having him... just a billionaire. Or president. He has more problems, ergo is more interesting. Taking on the state? Big stakes. Institutions failing? Big stakes. Though given recent events, the idea of a heroic president is starting to become more interesting... I loved Designated Survivor at the start at least for this reason. I still smile dumbly at Hugh Grant's Primeminister standing up to the American President in Love Actually. If only. We still need heroes. We need those who are strong enough to protect, even if it is we who must protect ourselves, or others from ourselves. That is what we crave. The strength to take action, and to do the right thing, and to have someone to depend on, even if it is just us.
Stories crave problems. Fair enough. But what kind of problems? In the great tradition, it was moral choices that dominated. But that involves acknowledging the moral weight of things, which we are increasingly loath to do. So we substitute mental, physical, and political problems, not as avatars for moral problems, but as problems in their own right. And thus the shift from courage to power and competence as the core concerns of stories.
For a story built around a moral challenge, one problem is often enough. For a story built around practical problems, yes, more problems mean more interesting, though also more complex and confusing.
Hasn’t morality always been subjective and somewhat on a scale? Competence was always the measure, or might makes right, the can over the should. A meritocracy - which sounds rather better. There are good logical reasons for moral choices - it’s not just a higher calling. I’ve been using the Dark Knight Batman movie to teach how power and will to act must be tempered with self control, the responsible use of power, restraint - a timely lesson given the current political oversteps in the US. But that’s not just a moral decision. There are real and terrible consequences for power without restraint, even if one put morality aside. Athens lost its allies over an island grab and was defeated 10 years later. Greenland could have likewise been America’s downfall (still could). Might makes right is a foolish strategy if you don’t have the moral certainty to gain rather than lose friends. Conversely, in the hands of a hero, might makes right, when righteously employed, and with restraint (see Batman, George Washington), is an incredible force for good. That is truly heroic.
Well, no. Morality has not always been subjective or on a scale. In most times and places, morality has been fixed. It has been, as Shakespeare said, the fixed canon of the almighty, the truth universally acknowledged. As Tolkien said in On Fairy Stories, a fairy story is characterized by its prohibitions. It is not about whether frogs can be princes, but about the absolute necessity of keeping promises, no matter how unpleasant.
And this matters greatly for story because you can't wind the spring of tension without first fixing one end to something that does not move. When morality becomes subjective and on a scale, there is no fixed point on which to anchor the spring of moral tension, and so the story has to rely on lesser issues or be built on shifting sands.
People tend to think of worldbuilding in terms of beasts and castles and feigned histories, but what it is really about, or should really be about, is establishing a moral framework in which the tension of the story can be anchored. A great example of this is Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (not the execrable Disney version, but the original text). It establishes a set of rules governing the lives and fates of mermaids, rules by which the little mermaid must live, and presents her with agonizing moral choices. It is a case study in using a fixed moral law to anchor the mainspring of story.
One of the key functions of magic in fairytales is to strip characters of their competence, thus forcing them to rely on their moral character instead. The prime example here is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which all Gawain's knightly prowess is set at naught by the Green Knight's magic, and Gawain survives his time in the Green Knight's hall only by the exercise of chastity. Similarly, competence is of no use against the power of the ring in LOTR. The powerful refuse to touch it, knowing that it would corrupt them. Only the humility of the hobbits can endure its influence.
Ok perhaps I should rephrase - the scale is not just x and y, it is z - or rather t = time. Today’s conservatives are yesterday’s progressives. We probably see Sir Gawain today as rather quaint. And since you mention Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s fascination with the antihero would likely have been impossible to perform publically a few hundred years earlier. Christian countries seem to have rather forgotten ‘thou shalt not kill’ conveniently when it suited them. Perhaps morality should be our north star, but it seems more to be the shrinking eclipse at the heart of ever broadening Venn diagrams….
Ah, well, that’s a different issue. We are not a fastidiously moral species and we never have been. Socially, we tend to cycle between periods of censoriousness and licentiousness. The ladies attending the the ball before the battle of Waterloo roughed their nipples to make then show through their diaphanous dresses. But whether we happen to live in a censorious or licentious period, human beings are not nice people.
We are, however, moral creatures in the sense that we have a sense that there is a moral order to the universe. (In the appendix to The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis provides an appendix showing that the moral law recognized by every society through time and around the world is broadly the same.) We may try to twist and bend the moral law to suit our appetites, but the very fact that we strive so hard to justify ourselves indicates that we feel a need for justification.
And this is the point of the moral as the core element of story, the fixed point that allows us to wind the spring of tension. It is because people sin. All the good stories are about sinners, but you can’t have a story about sinners without some objective law for them to sin against, even if you make one up for the purpose of the story.
It is not about the story preaching the actual moral law. Made up moral laws often work better to anchor story tension because they are clearer and less contested. And it is not about characters living happily according to the moral law, because that is both boring and unrealistic. It is about sinners struggling because they are conscious of the moral law which they are violating because they cannot bear the cost of moral compliance. It is not the function of stories to preach moral behavior, but to document the difficulty of living with a consciousness of the moral law.
The reason that so much modern literature is so poor is that the irreligious cannot bear to write a story with a fixed moral anchor, and the religious cannot bear to write a story about a sinner.
The Battle of What? Sorry, couldnt resist. It’s a good point about even the sinners needing to justify themselves. Look at Putin and Trump - they spend an AWFUL lot of time justifying themselves - though that could also just be called good branding. I’ve learned the hard way in life that just doing the right thing isn’t always enough - u hope people will see but often it comes down to who shouts the loudest about what they are doing. There are lots of sinners in the bible aren’t there? I think the religious write sinners and pilgrims just fine. In power dynamics, morality may just be another tool of control - sometimes self-control in the hopes others will too, at other times hypocritically controlling others with a standard yoy don’t keep. But the idea of a universal morality is appealing - the hanging question at the end of the Dark Knight where people have apparently proven they are moral, yet the question hangs - was the Joker right? Are people constrained by morality or society’s rules and expectations?
This article raises some fascinating points about the essential role of heroes in earlier generations vs. today.
It made me think of how the musical "Epic" approaches the hero story of Odysseus through a modern, "post-hero" lens. "Epic" largely concerns itself with the moral quandaries of mercy vs. ruthlessness, of how a life of violently fighting against his foes changes and scars Odysseus and his crew. But the original Homeric poem doesn't tackle any of these modern moral questions. Back then, it was a fundamental understanding of society that the world was full of people and monsters and elements trying to kill you, that men were supposed to be warriors, and that warriors fought and killed and tricked and outwitted their opponents, and were to be lauded and celebrated for their courage and heroics.
I'm very grateful that we no longer live in a world requiring every man to regularly fight to defend his town and village. But we do need a return to celebrating and lauding heroic qualities.
The ‘knight in shining armor’ trope was already satirized back at the start of the 17th century with Don Quixote. It’s a shame, really, but worse if ever the type of hero story should be limited, regardless of the age. I vote for both, crusaders and pilgrims.
Do you see whistleblowers as modern heroes or outcasts? Crusading environmentalists, lawyers giving their all for justice? Pro-life counsellors?
For story purposes, at least, I think we have to make a distinction between virtuous and heroic. For story purposes, you generally want some moment of crisis where the risks are high to create the clear heroic moment. Steady, life-long, virtuous, self-giving behavior does not necessarily produce such moments. (Which is why most adventure stories are about men, since steady, life-long, virtuous, self-giving behavior is more characteristic of women than men.)
In life we do tend to call all such self-giving behavior heroic, which is perfectly fair. But in story terms the structure of a heroic tale demands something more bold, a moment of extreme danger. It is worth noting that whistleblowers are often secondary characters in fiction, protected by the hero rather than being then hero.
That said, there are other motives for the activities you mention. Crusading environmentalists are often attention seeking rather than pursuing any kind of rational policy change. Lawyers often do pro-bono work as a form of PR, never risking either their lives or their fortunes. The motives of pro-life councilors are much less mixed, but again, their activity is quiet and steady. It does not have the profile of a hero story.
Ultimately, stories simplify reality. There is a well-defined shape to the action and characters tend to be much more simple and clear in their motives. It is hard to map story tropes onto people in real life. Their lives can be much more random and their motives can be much more mixed.
Definitely an interesting question. I think I tend to agree that society needs heroes, but realistically speaking, heroes as we use them in fiction don't truly exist. Or maybe rarely exist. Real life is more complicated than there is good and there is bad. I've not seen much, if any, of that show "The Boys", but it is my understanding that Homelander is beloved of the masses and seen as a hero when in reality he is the opposite.
Life is a lot like that.
This is probably the historian in me, but nuance matters. I can say that Wyatt Earp was heroic in that is avenged his brother's death at the hands of the Clantons, and I can also say that he was a cheater at cards, a bad husband, and murder working outside the law. Bad people CAN do good things, and Good people CAN do bad things. Idolizing real and complex people as heroes leads to...issues...
In FICTION, however, we have a different story (see what I did there?).
I do believe there is a dire need to return to the idea of heroes in fiction, and I actually think we are seeing that movement. Fiction can provide ideals to strive for while being realistically complex or unreaslistically less complex. As a teen, fiction went throught this "Dark and Gritty" phase which produced the best Batman movie ever made, but little else. I think maybe we've seen the death of Dark and Gritty with Snyder's DC movies being laid to rest.
There is also the whole "world saving" problem, in that I personally don't care at all about saving the world in fiction anymore. Likely a byproduct of reading far too many Pulp short stories, I NEED my stories to have lower, more personal stakes. I need heroics I can relate to.
I just finished a story called "The Cure" by JD Newcom in a 1930 issue of Adventure (writing a post about it as we speak), and while the main character does accomplish something martially heroic, he also humbles himself in the process. I will likely never fight a pitched battle against Berbers on horseback, but I can recognize and strive toward the heroic ideal of being humble and not exaggerating my accomplishments.
The real world will forever be complicated and will likely grow more-so. If approaching individuals honestly and thoroughly, the idea of a true "Hero" living on planet Earth right now likley has no exemplar. If it does, we don't know who they are. I'd much rather my fiction provide tanglible, relateable examples of heroics (packaged in two-fisted adventure) that I can strive for in my life. That's where fiction excels.
This has grown long and is rambling, so I'll stop. Hopefully my point comes across.
Wonderful article thank you. I think though, the need for heroes to be on the outside is less a function of our times and perhaps more just a function of story telling itself. Stories crave problems, it is their nightmare fuel, and having a billionaire who doesn't care about money and hides in a cave wearing a bat costume to mask his trauma is just so much more interesting than having him... just a billionaire. Or president. He has more problems, ergo is more interesting. Taking on the state? Big stakes. Institutions failing? Big stakes. Though given recent events, the idea of a heroic president is starting to become more interesting... I loved Designated Survivor at the start at least for this reason. I still smile dumbly at Hugh Grant's Primeminister standing up to the American President in Love Actually. If only. We still need heroes. We need those who are strong enough to protect, even if it is we who must protect ourselves, or others from ourselves. That is what we crave. The strength to take action, and to do the right thing, and to have someone to depend on, even if it is just us.
Stories crave problems. Fair enough. But what kind of problems? In the great tradition, it was moral choices that dominated. But that involves acknowledging the moral weight of things, which we are increasingly loath to do. So we substitute mental, physical, and political problems, not as avatars for moral problems, but as problems in their own right. And thus the shift from courage to power and competence as the core concerns of stories.
For a story built around a moral challenge, one problem is often enough. For a story built around practical problems, yes, more problems mean more interesting, though also more complex and confusing.
Hasn’t morality always been subjective and somewhat on a scale? Competence was always the measure, or might makes right, the can over the should. A meritocracy - which sounds rather better. There are good logical reasons for moral choices - it’s not just a higher calling. I’ve been using the Dark Knight Batman movie to teach how power and will to act must be tempered with self control, the responsible use of power, restraint - a timely lesson given the current political oversteps in the US. But that’s not just a moral decision. There are real and terrible consequences for power without restraint, even if one put morality aside. Athens lost its allies over an island grab and was defeated 10 years later. Greenland could have likewise been America’s downfall (still could). Might makes right is a foolish strategy if you don’t have the moral certainty to gain rather than lose friends. Conversely, in the hands of a hero, might makes right, when righteously employed, and with restraint (see Batman, George Washington), is an incredible force for good. That is truly heroic.
Well, no. Morality has not always been subjective or on a scale. In most times and places, morality has been fixed. It has been, as Shakespeare said, the fixed canon of the almighty, the truth universally acknowledged. As Tolkien said in On Fairy Stories, a fairy story is characterized by its prohibitions. It is not about whether frogs can be princes, but about the absolute necessity of keeping promises, no matter how unpleasant.
And this matters greatly for story because you can't wind the spring of tension without first fixing one end to something that does not move. When morality becomes subjective and on a scale, there is no fixed point on which to anchor the spring of moral tension, and so the story has to rely on lesser issues or be built on shifting sands.
People tend to think of worldbuilding in terms of beasts and castles and feigned histories, but what it is really about, or should really be about, is establishing a moral framework in which the tension of the story can be anchored. A great example of this is Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (not the execrable Disney version, but the original text). It establishes a set of rules governing the lives and fates of mermaids, rules by which the little mermaid must live, and presents her with agonizing moral choices. It is a case study in using a fixed moral law to anchor the mainspring of story.
One of the key functions of magic in fairytales is to strip characters of their competence, thus forcing them to rely on their moral character instead. The prime example here is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which all Gawain's knightly prowess is set at naught by the Green Knight's magic, and Gawain survives his time in the Green Knight's hall only by the exercise of chastity. Similarly, competence is of no use against the power of the ring in LOTR. The powerful refuse to touch it, knowing that it would corrupt them. Only the humility of the hobbits can endure its influence.
Ok perhaps I should rephrase - the scale is not just x and y, it is z - or rather t = time. Today’s conservatives are yesterday’s progressives. We probably see Sir Gawain today as rather quaint. And since you mention Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s fascination with the antihero would likely have been impossible to perform publically a few hundred years earlier. Christian countries seem to have rather forgotten ‘thou shalt not kill’ conveniently when it suited them. Perhaps morality should be our north star, but it seems more to be the shrinking eclipse at the heart of ever broadening Venn diagrams….
Ah, well, that’s a different issue. We are not a fastidiously moral species and we never have been. Socially, we tend to cycle between periods of censoriousness and licentiousness. The ladies attending the the ball before the battle of Waterloo roughed their nipples to make then show through their diaphanous dresses. But whether we happen to live in a censorious or licentious period, human beings are not nice people.
We are, however, moral creatures in the sense that we have a sense that there is a moral order to the universe. (In the appendix to The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis provides an appendix showing that the moral law recognized by every society through time and around the world is broadly the same.) We may try to twist and bend the moral law to suit our appetites, but the very fact that we strive so hard to justify ourselves indicates that we feel a need for justification.
And this is the point of the moral as the core element of story, the fixed point that allows us to wind the spring of tension. It is because people sin. All the good stories are about sinners, but you can’t have a story about sinners without some objective law for them to sin against, even if you make one up for the purpose of the story.
It is not about the story preaching the actual moral law. Made up moral laws often work better to anchor story tension because they are clearer and less contested. And it is not about characters living happily according to the moral law, because that is both boring and unrealistic. It is about sinners struggling because they are conscious of the moral law which they are violating because they cannot bear the cost of moral compliance. It is not the function of stories to preach moral behavior, but to document the difficulty of living with a consciousness of the moral law.
The reason that so much modern literature is so poor is that the irreligious cannot bear to write a story with a fixed moral anchor, and the religious cannot bear to write a story about a sinner.
The Battle of What? Sorry, couldnt resist. It’s a good point about even the sinners needing to justify themselves. Look at Putin and Trump - they spend an AWFUL lot of time justifying themselves - though that could also just be called good branding. I’ve learned the hard way in life that just doing the right thing isn’t always enough - u hope people will see but often it comes down to who shouts the loudest about what they are doing. There are lots of sinners in the bible aren’t there? I think the religious write sinners and pilgrims just fine. In power dynamics, morality may just be another tool of control - sometimes self-control in the hopes others will too, at other times hypocritically controlling others with a standard yoy don’t keep. But the idea of a universal morality is appealing - the hanging question at the end of the Dark Knight where people have apparently proven they are moral, yet the question hangs - was the Joker right? Are people constrained by morality or society’s rules and expectations?
https://peterwarrengasper.substack.com/p/hero?r=2cwh0&utm_medium=ios