posted
It seems to me that in fairy tales and traditional fantasy novels, the heroes have a number of traits that seem kind of dumb, but which they must have as heroes because these are heoric traits.
For example a hero generally has a group of close but bumbling friends who he helps out no matter what kind of trouble their feckless behavior gets them into and no matter what the hero is trying to do at the time. You'd think at some point, the hero would choose to practice "tough love" and leave them to get out of their own scrapes. But he always rushes in to save them, heedless of his own life, because that is heroic behavior.
Or the hero who must treat the evil lady sedductress with courtesy and consideration because no matter how evil she is, she is still a woman. She can lie about him, but he wouldn't dream of contradicting her, and if she's coming to kill him, he'd still help her over a mud-puddle because that is just what a hero does.
But I'm particularly wondering about one less-vaunted aspect of this so-called heroic behavior: believing someone and believing in someone despite all evidence to the contrary. The hero can be betrayed by one of his companions who laughs evilly and says, "Now I get to have all the power!" And the hero, who has been ignoring and writing-off all the warnings of this from page one, says, "I know you're not evil. You'd never hurt me" until his former "friend" either stabs him in the gut or says, "You're right. I'd never hurt you" and rejoins the fold.
But in real life, it seems to me that people are constantly evaluating information for its veracity. If your friend tells you something, you filter it through your experiences of your friend's truth in the past, how likely it seems, and so on. To ignore that something is obviously a lie is foolish, and it seems to me that few people are willing to do this all the time.
But people always seem willing to believe anything, no matter how obviously foolish if they're in love.
Is this because heroic behavior is stupid and people in love are stupid? Or is this because heroic people are noble and people in love are noble?
Is there an objective kind of nobility in letting others stab you in the back when you could have stopped them? Is it a sign of moral goodness to believe blatant lies because you have faith in others?
Should one try to stamp out from one's personality the tendency to believe that others mean well and to gloss over times when you know on some level that they're probably lying?
(This hasn't come out how I wanted, so I may have to rephrase later, but for now, I have to leave for work.)
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
So, which fantasy novels have you read, anyways? Cause those guys sound like, well, dopes.
It sounds like you've equated heroism with being a sucker, always believing the best about people and being chivalrous (sp?) even when it hurts. You know, like the time Robin let a bunch of British girls beat him up because he wouldn't hit a girl?
No, heroes don't have to be wearing rose colored glasses, to expunge even the knowledge of deceit and treachery from his mind. Would you say Jack Bauer is a hero? Or do heroes have to always play by the rules?
Posts: 10 | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't know that what you've written is true of all heroes, or even all traditional fantasy/fairy tale heroes. I also think the version of the stories you read makes a big difference. And when I retell fairy tales to my daughter, I tell them in a way that makes sense to me-- because it's a fairy tale, I can do that.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think part of what we rightly or wrongly consider "nobility" is the idea that faith and trust and other virtues must be believed in, even in the face of evidence to the contrary; the scrappy kid who fights against overwhelming odds, for example, COULD stop and analyze the situation and realize that he's better off running away. That's one of the reasons the phrase "don't be a hero" has entered the lexicon as a warning against doing something that, while brave, is also stupid.
I think choosing to act as if a principle holds true despite clear evidence to the contrary IS a form of stubborn bravery, a form that's very common among protagonists in certain genres (especially Westerns and fantasies). I also think it's frequently impractical.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I guess I just see a parallel between girls thinking that if they just believe hard enough in a person (usually a male they're romantically interested in) and they ignore the signs that he's a liar, then all will come well in the end.
In the same way my architype of heroes always seem to believe in the basic goodness of those around them, seemingly as if they could believe hard enough to make those people good.
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't think I see it this way, if I understand what you mean. Let me try to explain my view using an example, and you can tell me if I am understanding you rightly.
In Dostoyevsky's novel "The Insulted and the Humiliated", our hero Vanya is in love with a girl who falls for someone of the landed aristocracy (Vanya and girl are from the educated working classes). The guy she falls for is the son of the man whose estate her father runs. The son (Aloysha) loves her back, they plan to marry, etc. but his father is very opposed to the match. So Aloysha hesitates, because he doesn't want his father to disown him, and lose all his money and privilege and have to change his whole way of life and become a working person himself. So the girl (whom I think is named Nastasha, though she's actually a Katherina Ivanovna type character, for fans of D.) is thrown into this terrible limbo of doubt and worry, meanwhile Aloysha's father is suing Nastasha's dad and claiming he stole from him and mismanaged his estate, which is totally untrue, but done by Aloysha's dad as revenge for Aloysha falling for Nastasha, which he sees as a plot by Nastasha's dad to get hold of his money through marriage. (Aloysha's dad doesn't believe in love except as something foolish young people sometimes do that endangers good asset management policies.)
Anyway, while Nastasha's family falls to ruins around her (the lawsuit is destroying her father), Aloysha hesitates, sometimes loving her, sometimes forgetting all about her amid his social life with other young aristocrats, including sweet heiresses his father intentionally puts in his way. She's thrown into a dreadful situation, and our hero Vanya stands beside her, is kind and good, helps her and her family, provides a rock of stability, even though they had previously been engaged and she jilted him for this wanton angel from a different social caste.
Was our dear Vanya being heroic or foolish? Many might say he was abetting her in the process of destroying her family through this doomed love of hers. Surely he felt hurt at being jilted, and at her obvious passion for another man. But he loved her and he was of a heroic sort, so he didn't focus on himself but, rather, worried about her and her family, and did everything he could to help. Do you think this qualifies as what you mean, dean?
Vanya was always my favorite character in that book, because he worked diligently to promote peace, sanity, stability, respect, gentleness, in what was essentially his family (by betrothal -- even though she had changed her mind), and while everything was imploding around them. His heart must have been breaking, yet he was everyone's rock of strength and purpose amid the storm.
So I guess I think that in most stories (and in real life) there is a huge range available of gray area in the way we are free to interpret stories, and that my interpretation is usually near the "admire the courage and steadfastness of the hero" end, rather than what feels to me to be a more cynical view that it's always wiser to cut your losses and leave people who make foolish choices to fry in their own funeral pyres.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I know I don't have your number either. I will be brave and say that my number is 422-7392.
Yes, kind of like that. But you don't mention in what ways (other than jilting him) that Natasha behaves badly. I mean, it sounds as though Natasha is a basically good person who gets herself into a bad situation. I think I'd stand beside her myself because it sounds as though she's confused more than unkind.
I'm thinking more of a situation in which the Natasha character would be a bad person, manipulative, dishonest, etc, but the Vanya person would stand by them and believe in them anyway and might even try to deny to himself that Natasha is that bad. That he might see her bad behavior but justify it to himself by saying that she's not really bad; she might be immature, but she doesn't realize how her deceit affects others.
Is Vanya foolish or heroic to stand beside Natasha, though? Is he more foolish if she's less good? Is he also more noble if she's less good?
I can't help but think of my personal dramatics in terms of literature.
Currently, I'm thinking that I want to reread The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Have you read that, Anne Kate?
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think that the hero described her is a fairy-tale hero, and it makes sense if he doesn't act like a real person: he's not a person but a part of the psyche, the heroic part. The part that can see through deception is a different part, and can be represented by a different character.
To apply this to real life, I'm sure, would mean embracing both the heroic part *and* the wise part: both Parsifal and the hermit, for example.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ah, now that I know more of the back story, I totally agree with your decision, dean.
I have read The Bridge of San Luis Rey and it's a wonderful book! I love Thornton Wilder. Have you read the play "Our Town" or any of his other novels? I will read San Luis Rey again, if you want to read it, so we can talk about it. It's an awesome book!
As for Vanya and Nastasha, she wasn't actively bad or manipulative, she realized how good he was being to continue to help her after she had jilted him, and she was kindly and gentle with him, though it was clear she didn't take his wellbeing that much to heart, since she knew she was hurting him and didn't really try to sheild him from the pain, even. She didn't try to manipulate him to get him to hang around, or anything, so I think she wasn't being actively bad for him, at least not deliberately. It's just that it was a bad situation for him to be in.
I personally don't think he was being foolish, though I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd been unable to take it, and had to distance himself from her and her family and their problems. What's interesting is there was a great sub-plot in which Vanya (because he's such a great guy) rescued this young orphaned girl from being pressed into prostitution, and she is around 15, I guess, and she falls in love with him. He doesn't even see her or notice that she loves him, as he only cares about Nastasha. His whole heart and emotional interest are bound up with her. Nellie (the young girl), I think, gradually gains a real woman's love for Vanya (she's very mature because of having grown up in such difficult circumstances) and her heart is all the while breaking for Vanya, and he does some of the same callous type unthinking things to her that Nastasha is doing to him, which is mainly ignoring her, not noticing her devotion to him, and obviously being totally in love with someone else.
All of that part is very subtle, and perhaps someone else would have a totally different interpretation of the events, but to me it helped bring the balance back to seeing that what happened with Nastasha is something that just sometimes happens, and that people aren't in 100% control of whom they love, and stuff like that. It brought more of the justice back to Nastasha's side. You felt less that Vanya was being offended against, and more that circumstances worked out this way, and he chose to respond to them as he did. I found him very admirable indeed, while I saw Nastasha and Nellie rather as tragic figures. It's a really good book. Sort of Dostoyevsky-light, for those who can't take his longer novels. =)
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Will B, that's a good insight into the way mythos works. It reminds me of something Tolkien said to his son Christopher in one of his letters. He said in a real war, we all know that there are orcs fighting on both sides.
In literature, often individual characters model only part of a complete human. I think in the books I like best, things are a lot more mixed, and the characters are all real. Vanya had his noble side, but also was rather obtuse about Nellie.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
