The View From Drew

I discuss heroes with my junior English students during the first semester of the year.  It's a perfect theme to utilize in their essays for the New York State Regents and SATs.  We read "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and discuss how their acts were heroic.  We look at Joseph Campbell's and Aristotle's definitions of a hero.  In recent years, it's given me pause to think because we often affix the designation "hero" so quickly to just about anyone.  Some people look at Britney Spears as heroic or Madonna for that matter.  I'm reminded of Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale, giving out to a young Lillo Brancato on how Mickey Mantle isn't a real hero.

He was right.

To me a hero is one who takes a risk to advance humanity and possibly save it from itself.  Jackie Robinson was a hero, Mickey Mantle was not.  Martin Luther King was a hero, Al Sharpton is not.  Madonna, Britney Spears, and even U2 have never been, nor, I doubt will they ever be heroic in the true sense of the word. 

As a kid, my hero was The Six Million Dollar Man.  Every week, Steve Austin put his life on the line to save the United States from threats from around the world and beyond.  It was a fantasy show, fiction, and yet there was something more realistic in this portrayal of heroism than in what we consider heroic in this day and age.  Take a moment and think about who your hero is.  Does he or she perform some great service to the world and humanity?

A hero doesn't have to have international fame.  A hero could be a parent, trying to make it work right with their child and in doing so, raising that child correctly.

A hero could be the person who decides not to have children.  Trust me, putting aside selfish desires that will eventually fall flat and result in obnoxious children is heroic.

These are just two examples.  Who is a hero in your life and why?