When I came up with the name for this blog, I used the term hero in the literary sense – the main character of a story – because I think we create a sense of self and experience life through the creation of a personal narrative. Each of us is, then, a hero. The hero of our own story. But the term hero can be interpreted differently. I went to Paris recently to see an exhibition at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France about Heroes. While there I bought the book they produced to accompany the exhibition.
The contents page will give you an idea of the scope and structure of the exhibition. You’ll see they’ve taken the idea of the hero and explored what makes a hero a hero with some examples from different times and different countries, but there is, of course, this being Paris, a strong emphasis on French heroes – with one whole section termed “National Heroes”, with the nation in question being France. The use of the term “hero” to mean the main character of a novel emerged in the 17th century apparently. However, this exploration of heroes and “heroisation” is more comprehensive than that and particularly highlights the popular notion of a hero as being someone who does something exceptional, someone who does something out of the ordinary.
The original term “hero” was used to describe someone who was more than human but less than a god – a demi-god.
The examples given in the exhibition are just that – examples. We can all come up with our own favourite heroes after all, but the principles revealed are applicable in different times and different countries.
The first section of the exhibit, focuses on “aristocratic” heroes, starting with the mythical God-King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, and concentrates on the original, classical meaning of the word hero – half-human, half-god. These classical heroes were not like other men and women. They were something greater than human, but not as great as the gods. However, as befitting this concept, they were kings, rulers and great warriors.
The next session is about French national heroes and they are almost exclusively soldiers and fighters. They include Joan of Arc (one of the first great female heroes) and Napoleon, the Emperor, through to the soldier and Resistance heroes of the twentieth century World Wars. It’s at this point that the authors mention the emergence of the victim, or, more specifically, what they call the “sacralisation” of the victim. The appalling slaughter of the trenches during World War One changed people’s attitudes. The focus was not on great heroic soldier-leaders, rather the focus was on the suffering. This has continued right through the last century and into our new one with 9/11 where although there were many stories of individual heroism, they were told amongst a host of stories of victims. In some ways, this has contributed to the changes in the modern conception of the hero, which we see developed in the third section of the exhibition.
These newer, global heroes, are not warriors, kings, queens and rulers any more. In fact, they are, primarily, fictional and/or from the world of entertainment. James Bond, Superman and Batman, for example, and people like Jimi Hendrix as an example of the musician-hero, and Zidane as a sporting hero (despite his sending off in the World Cup final he’s still a hero in France). Even the modern fighter-hero of Che Guevara has been pretty much turned into a commodity, probably more famous for his image than anything else with today’s young people.
What has happened, and is still happening, is the personalisation of the hero. They don’t say this in the exhibition but I think it’s a kind of post-modernisation of the hero. It’s fascinating to see this evolution of the hero from God-king, to celebrity following one strand. And from public and universal form to a much more deeply personal one. We all have our heroes, in the sense of people who have certain characteristics which we hugely admire and, may even aspire to emulate. However, the authors of this exhibition are very clear that there is a difference between heroes and great men and women. It’s this – the traditional concept of a hero is someone who emerges in a crisis or extreme situation to carry out specific courageous acts which involve personal sacrifice for the sake of others. It’s not a way of life. It’s a stepping up, a courageous stepping up to deal with a situation of extreme danger. This reminds me of the work of Viktor Frankl, the author of ‘The Will to Meaning’ and inventor of ‘logotherapy‘. He said that bad things happen, the question is what stand are we going to take? In other words, how will we choose to respond to those events.
It’s also interesting that the very first hero they mention, Gilgamesh, was probably not a historical character. You could say this of all the great mythical heroes of classical times. And, in the present day, we’re back to that – fictional, fictionalised and mythical heroes. This makes it very clear that it’s others who create heroes – the process of ‘heroisation’ often occurs after the death of the hero themselves, but even while still living it’s the community which makes someone into a hero, not the person themselves. In fact, the process of ‘heroisation’ is a narrative process.
Let me finish then, by returning to my original definition – the literary one. We are all heroes. We are all the main characters of our life stories. We are all unique and whether or not we are ever called to commit a “heroic” act in the sense described in this exhibition, we become who we are through our responses to the situations we find ourselves in. We can grow by the characters we develop from the stands we take in adversity. That’s why one of the best possible outcomes from an illness is a growth, a development of self and of character.
