Hero

A hero is an archetypical character, that is, a recurrent symbol or figure in a society’s mythology, arts, religion, and other cultural aspects. The hero archetype is an ideal person (usually male) who possesses virtues and outstanding traits meant to be admired and imitated, such as courage, leadership, noble sentiments, self-sacrifice, bravery, and strength.

In ancient mythologies, the hero was an individual of divine or royal ancestry and great physical prowess. The hero always had a mission: a quest to undertake or a problem to solve, in which he must face great dangers, perform amazing feats, and return with great achievements. As such, the hero has often been a warrior or described in warrior terms. The hero has been the common protagonist of ancient poetry and folklore.

Hero worship is universal. In modern societies, the hero has moved beyond the sphere of legend and of superhuman features. Contemporary heroes are diverse, ranging from fantasy superheroes to ordinary people who engage in extraordinary behavior. The hero figure appears in all the arts and popular cultures without losing its mythical qualities. In Western cultures, heroic qualities are usually identified as values that privilege individuality. In these stories, the hero often undertakes a quest in pursuit of personal glory and achievement. Spiritual heroes are also described in epic, warrior terms, even though the struggle is in the spiritual realm. The heroic myth may have provided a behavioral model as well as cohesion and stability in societies undergoing conflict and change.

The study of the hero from myth and legends to its contemporary inceptions occupies experts from a wide array of interdisciplinary fields, including religious studies, anthropology, psychology, ethnology, sociology, the humanities, and many others.

Background

The role of the hero has survived from the great ancient epics of the world, through Norse, German, and British sagas to modern filmmaking and popular arts of the twenty-first century. As such, it has long been of interest to scholars. Two of the most prominent scholars of hero studies were American mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–87) and Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961).

In Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), he defined the "monomyth"—the hero’s journey. Campbell pinpointed common characteristics across religions and myths worldwide, finding common themes among them. From this, he established that a hero’s journey is among the oldest stories in the world. To begin with, a hero must follow a journey with a series of stages. Campbell broke down the monomyth into seventeen stages, divided into three main stages: separation, initiation, and return. In the first stage, the hero leaves normal life behind in order to undertake a quest that leads to a problem. Second, the hero faces a series of challenges, from which valuable lessons are gleaned. During this stage, the hero may receive the assistance or guidance of various human and nonhuman helpers. Finally, the hero finds a solution to the problem and returns to society. There can be some variations in the ending of the hero’s journey, however. For instance, in some cases, the hero dies or leaves, although it tends to be in an exemplary or a self-sacrificial manner. This is the case of some religious leaders, such as Jesus Christ, the Buddha, or King Arthur’s last journey to Avalon. Furthermore, Campbell suggested that each human follows the hero’s journey during their lifetime.

According to Jungian theory, specific simplified representations called "archetypes" constantly reappear in the collective unconscious shared by all societies. The "collective unconscious," a term coined by Jung, is part of an ancient universal mind common to all humankind that descends from ancestral memory. This ancestral memory, buried in the unconscious, was shaped from past experiences shared by ancient peoples, which explains why different cultures share archetypes. Jung considered the hero to be one such archetype in the collective unconscious. Jung’s views aligned with Campbell’s at many points and have also been deeply influential in popular culture as well as within psychoanalytic practice.

Impact

The ancient stories of heroes and the theories that define them have been used in the creation of famous literature and movies. In fact, the stories of ancient heroes remain fodder for popular culture. Heroes appear in still-popular legends of Greek and Arthurian heroes, Shakespearean drama, romantic operas, and modern works, such as The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series. Theories that define the heroic journey are used to better develop the stories. For example, the heroic journey can be appreciated in American films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Rocky (1976), the Star Wars series (1977–2015), The Neverending Story (1984), and the Matrix series (1999–2003), among many others.

It is important to note that in later representations, beginning in the early modern era, the hero’s quest also often represents an interior journey in search of self-discovery and growth. Modern representations of the hero can also be classified by characteristics other than the unwavering bravery, prowess, and supernatural strength of the highly masculine warriors, kings, and demigods depicted in epic poetry and ancient myths. Heroes in contemporary media may be willing or unwilling actors, tragic or comic, sympathetic outcasts and rebels (known as "antiheroes" or "Byronic heroes"), individualists ("Randian") or communitarians. Figures whom people perceive to be heroes also tend to have a set of heroism traits, including leadership, and find themselves in unique circumstances.

Moreover, modern heroes can also be female. Writer Valerie Estelle Frankel has argued that the hero’s journey envisioned by Campbell does not apply to female heroes, or heroines, however. Frankel asserts that heroines must rather overcome different challenges, such as confronting themselves, and reach different outcomes than their male counterparts. They also tend to be classified into several different archetypes, such as the maiden, the mother, and the crone.

Bibliography

Allison, Scott T., and George R. Goethals. Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato: New World Lib., 2008. Print.

Campbell, Joseph. Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth. Ed. Evans Lansing Smith. New York: New World Lib., 2015. Print.

Frankel, Valerie Estelle. From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010. Print.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9 of Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Ed. Gerhard Adler, Michael Fordham, and Herbert Read. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. Digital file.

McDonald, Dennis R. Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero. Lanham: Rowman, 2015. Print.

Raglan, Lord. The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama. 1936. Mineola: Dover, 2013. Print.