MYTHS AND HEROES
I’m going to present the notion of myths and heroes. Myths and heroes have always been part of our lives, so we can ask: do we need heroes as role mode? To answer that, first I’m going to give the definition of a hero, and then I’m going to explain how a hero can influence us in our actions. To my mind, the two documents that illustrate the best this notion are “dream jobs” and “superheroes and morality”. This first documents is from a biography, “fighter pilots, the memoirs of legendary ace robin olds”, written in 2011 by Robin Olds. We learn in that text that he chose to became a pilot n the WW2 thanks to his father. In fact, when he was little, he always had a lot of admiration for him. In fact, according t him, his father had many qualities, like energy, eagerness, determination. This text describes the notion because almost every child has taken his parents as idols. In fact they helped us to build our personality, and to learn how to live. But the qualities that a hero must have differ according to the person. For robin Olds, a hero has to be fearless, but for other people, a hero has to be generous, intelligent, or to have morality.
And that’s the case of superheroes. And I’m going to show it with the second document. So this is an extract from a psychology book, written by robin Roseberg in 2008. The author grew up with superheroes’ stories during his childhood. He was fascinated by adventures, and wanted to be like them. But as an adult, he discovered a new face of superheroes, which is morality. In fact, he advocates the fact that superhero journeys serve as models for our journeys. And I agree with that idea. In fact, we can learn about ourselves through their stories, because they’re represented as humans, so we can identify with them. We imagine what we would have done at their place, and we make our own opinion. So in the two documents, the argument put forward is that heroes guide us in life, they help us to make decision, and we have admiration for them. I think that we’re very influenced by them, because sometimes we want to become like them, and have the same way of life. But a hero is a subjective notion, because it differs depending on the person. For example, Margaret thatcher was a myth for some people, but for others she was an evil.
