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'A Hero in Our Eyes': Davy, Huck, Clark, and Ollie
| Article
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19566 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
4,898 Words |
| Author
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M. Thomas Inge
M. Thomas Inge is Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of the
Humanities at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. He
is editor of Truman Capote: Conversations and Comics as
Culture, both published by the University Press of Mississippi. |
My title comes from a poem by Jonathan Swift, a man who found few people to admire in his society and who left us the most acerbic view of human nature we have--the lascivious, stinking, and excrement-flinging Yahoos. The full quotation reads, "Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes." What Swift suggests is that we admire only those who have what we covet. While there is truth in that cynical observation, I do believe that our tendency to worship heroes is not entirely a matter of jealousy and envy. I agree, however, with Swift's implication that our way of viewing heroes is what matters. That is to say, it is not so much the qualities possessed by an individual that elicit our admiration but the way we view that person and what we look for in the hero that makes the difference.
My topic, then, is what constitutes for Americans "a hero in our eyes." What are the qualities of character, the accomplishments, the special features we look for in our heroes? The question brings odd and unexpected results.
This is not the traditional way to view the heroes of Western culture, as the great critics and commentators would have it. Thomas Carlyle, in On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), looked to the categories of knowledge and the structure of civilization to locate admirable men within these areas of activity; his chapter titles refer to the hero as divinity, prophet, poet, priest, man of letters, and king. Looking to mythology, history, and tradition in The Hero (1937), Lord Raglan isolated a list of twenty-two characteristics of the traditional hero's life and career--his special origin and birth, unusual events in his childhood, his coming of age and victory over adversarial forces, his assumption of leadership and eventual fall from grace, and his mysterious death followed by universal mourning and eternal commemoration.
It can be enlightening and fun to apply these characteristics to our heroes to try out the fit. Here is Marshall Fishwick on John F. Kennedy:
His father was called to a royal court (as Ambassador to the court St. James) and the son was educated by (presumably) wise men (at Harvard). Then he went off to fight an evil dragon (the Japanese Navy) and after a bloody fiasco (PT 109) triumphed and returned to marry the beautiful princess (Jackie). Having inherited his father's kingdom (politics) he fought and defeated a second contender (Nixon) before taking over as ruler (president). For a time he reigned smoothly and prescribed laws. Then he suddenly lost favor (the Bay of Pigs crisis), tried to
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