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Hero Today and Gone Tomorrow: Heroism in the Eighties
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13989 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1988 |
5,555 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
James Thurber's "The Greatest Man in the World" was published in 1935. It is the story of Jacky "Pal" Smurch, who becomes a national hero by flying solo nonstop around the world. Alas, Smurch is not really suited to his new role. He is a grown-up delinquent, a semicriminal vulgarian, a thug, and a selfish, greedy slob. Before the cheering public can discover his real character, the authorities spirit him away and try to coach him in properly heroic behavior. But he persists in sneering at other heroes like Charles Lindbergh, while flaunting his own achievement to reporters in the most offensive manner and language. In one of the tale's more incredible passages, editors do not print their interview with Smurch; instead, their readers are given a fantasy of modesty and self-effacement, with a retouched photograph that transforms his leer into a pleasant smile. At a secret meeting of dignitaries on the ninth floor of a New York skyscraper, he is rude to the president of the Untied States and--horror of horrors--announces that he means to milk his heroic status for money. To save the nation from such a demoralizing disgrace, the president has Smurch flung out of a ninth-floor window and buried in Arlington Cemetery, under a tasteful shaft of white marble. The nations of the world pay tribute to America's greatest hero, while his mother, who loathed him, is forced to bow her head during a national rite of two minutes' silence.
Today's reader will probably assume that Thurber was denouncing heroism as an empty sham; but that was not his intention. The writer did believe in heroes and had a clear idea--evidently modeled on Lindbergh--of how they behaved:
They wore their laurels gracefully, withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually of fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of their varying fortunes.
What Thurber illustrated was a tendency in America (and in any democratic society) to make the private identity of the hero as important as his public and heroic achievement. We know that Lindbergh had his share of flaws, just as we know that today a real-life Smurch would not end up in Arlington Cemetery, and that his odious character would provoke at least as much attention as the deed that put him in the public eye. His agent would make lucrative deals with film and television producers. Publishers would be compelled to bid for the details of his exploit and his grotty life, especially the latter. His vulgar boasting would amuse large crowds on the lecture circuit, and his flouting of civility--above all his rudeness to the president--would be the usual cover stories
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