Great IdeasStories, art and words
Heroes
What makes a hero, and how heroes changed from Achilles to Huck Finn.
The question
What makes someone a hero? And how did the idea of a hero change from Achilles to Huck Finn?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
c. 750 BC (from older oral poetry)
Homer, The Iliad
Achilles is the greatest warrior at Troy, fast, strong and proud. He fights for honor and lasting fame, and he knows he will die young. Homer's hero is magnificent but flawed, and only at the end does he learn pity.
c. 725 BC (from older oral poetry)
Homer, The Odyssey
Odysseus is a different kind of hero: clever, patient and full of tricks. He survives by his wits, outsmarting the Cyclops and finding his way home. His heroism is endurance and loyalty to his family.
“Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.”
29–19 BC (unfinished)
Virgil, The Aeneid
Virgil's Aeneas is a hero of duty. He carries his father, leads his people and gives up what he wants to found a new nation. He is less dazzling than Achilles but more responsible.
“Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore.”
c. AD 100–120
Plutarch, The Lives: Theseus, Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Pericles, Alexander and the other Greeks
Plutarch's heroes are real people: lawgivers, generals and statesmen of Greece and Rome. He shows their virtues and their faults, and pairs a Greek with a Roman so readers can compare. His Lives taught later readers, including Shakespeare and the American founders, about greatness.
c. 1591–1599
William Shakespeare, Henry V
In Henry V, the young king who once ran wild becomes a leader who inspires his tired soldiers. On the night before battle he walks among them in disguise. Shakespeare shows a hero who calls ordinary men his brothers.
1605
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part One
Don Quixote has read so many tales of knights that he sets out to be one, and attacks windmills he thinks are giants. Cervantes makes fun of old hero stories, yet the old man's kindness and ideals win readers' love. Who is the real hero: the dreamer or his sensible squire, Sancho?
“"what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go."”
1884–1885
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck Finn is a poor, uneducated boy, not a knight or a king. His heroism is quiet: he protects his friend Jim against what his whole society tells him. Twain makes a hero out of plain decency.
1923
George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan
Shaw's Joan of Arc is a farm girl who leads armies, crowns a king and is burned for heresy, then named a saint centuries later. Shaw presents her as a person of genius and common sense whom the powers of her day could not understand.
“She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages.”
For young readers
A hero is someone who does something brave or good, often for others. Some heroes are strong, like Achilles. Some are clever, like Odysseus. Some are loyal, kind or honest.
You don't need a sword to be a hero! Huck Finn was a hero because he stood by his friend. Who are the heroes in your life?
Talk about it
- Who is your favorite hero from a story? Why?
- Achilles was strong but proud. Can a hero have faults?
- Don Quixote thought windmills were giants. Is he a hero or a fool, or both?
- What makes an everyday hero?
- Would you rather be strong like Achilles or clever like Odysseus?
Where else on the site
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.