http://www.phywriter.com/archives/2005/06/24/heroes-anti-heroes-and-saints/
I’ve been listening to author Walter Mosley’s comments to the Smithsonian about black male heroes, a subject close to his heart. In the course of his talk, he talked for awhile about the nature of heroism - what is is, and what is isn’t.
He builds his case in the following way:
“I recently watched a tv nature show in which a very small mouse was confronted by a large snake in the dead end of her own home. The mouse, instead of giving in to fear, leapt on the snake’s head, confusing it momentarily, and then ran up the length of his body to escape from the hole.
This tiny mammal proved herself as a hero, at least to me. That is, she faced up to, and survived against, an overwhelming foe. It was real heroism, life under the threat of death, as it occurs every day, for every species, including our own.
The mouse not only overcame the snake but she soon returned to her nest. You see, that was the only home that she had, and she was pregnant. The deathtrap was also a home for her future children.
Later on, I saw the same mouse (or another lone that looked a lot like her) kill another mouse and eat his brain in order to enrich her milk with that nutrional organ. That was a bloody scene, and it did not make me like her more, but neither did it disprove her as a hero in my mind.
Survival, I think, is a dirty business, and heroes shouldn’t be confused as saints.
(later…)
Heroism, to my understanding, is simply survival. And to make my very human definition even more human, it is really only based on the the attempt to survive.
Heroism is in our blood. It is life itself, at least in part.
(still later…)
Heroism, as a rule, is not studied. One does not risk his own life if he has other options. It’s when we are cornered, like that mouse, that we stand up to, and try to do the impossible. And survival is the most impossible thing, because death is waiting for all of us; evilly, without sense, without memory, without even a name.”
That’s some interesting thinking.
It was later when I was in my second most productive place to think that the thought occurred to me that anti-heroes aren’t what we think, that the term itself is flawed. I’m thinking of Mel Gibson as Mad Max in The Road Warrior. The movie “begins with a narration re-introducing us to wandering ex-cop Max (Gibson), and then we’re off. In post-apocalyptic Australia, Max wanders the nuclear waste lands in search of Earth’s most precious resource: gasoline. When he discovers a band of people guarding a large deposit of fuel, he lends his services as a driver to help them escape from a vicious group of bandits intent on taking the gas for themselves.”
The thing is, he doesn’t have to, and in fact isn’t planning to. The former highway cop has lost most of his former devotion to helping others.
Most, but not all. A pivotal scene shows him leaving the compound, having second thoughts (brought on the silent condemnation of a dog named “Dog”), and then returning with a way to save the people. He is not a saint by any stretch of the imagination, and yet he does help the people. He is considered an anti-hero (because he is not a knight in shining armor) but I think that is wrong, especially in light of Mosley’s observations on heroism.
To me, Mad Max was a hero, warts and all. By driving and fighting and opposing the vengeful biker gang, he provided the means of survival for the people with the tanker truck of gas. An anti-hero would be something else again, someone interested only in their own survival, maybe, or even someone interested in death.
But it is the hero who is also a saint who further interests me. A saint is one who is “a virtuous man”, that is so say, a man of moral excellence. He not only is concerned with horizontal survival, he is also interested in the vertical element of morality, a servant of higher ideals.
I am working on a series of stories that feature the fantasy city of Beladri and two competing houses (theoretically are part of the same Caducean Order), the House of the Vulture (Assassin Priests) and the House of the Dove (Knights Templar). In my head, I’ve always thought of the assassins as those interested in strictly horizontal matters, but it now appears that while they appear to be anti-heroes (dispensing death), that doesn’t necessarily preclude or prohibit them from also acting as heroes (providing a type of survival) on occasion.
The knights, on the other hand, would be saints in this defintion, not only concerned with survival, but also with right and wrong and an awareness of worship, obedience, and the spirtitual reality.
Thus is conflict created between the two houses and we are given prime landscape for a colorful discussion of heroes and saints.