This Year's Field

Now that the reading aspect of our class has come to an end, it is a good time to reflect on what has been learned and how it applies in today's world.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that many of the heroes we see in films, on television and in the written stories of today have aspects that are based on some of the heroes we have studied.  I don't see any out and out direct copies, but character traits and flaws are present if you are paying attention.  It is obvious that writers of today have been inspired by thousands of years worth of stories.  We didn't get to read very many, but we probably did get a good representative sampling.  After finishing all of the stories for this year's class, it seems like an appropriate time to return to our roots and evaluate the journey of the heroes.  Since that was supposed to be our focus in the class, I will give my evaluation of how they performed and their overall ranking.

Gilgamesh started pretty strong.  He gets a few points off because he wasn't really a man and had a lot of supernatural elements in play.  He also wan't able to successfully complete his task which would have earned him immortality.  He needed a little help from his best friend to conquer some foes, but we shouldn't really count that against him too much.  Why should he have to work harder than necessary?  All in all, he left, he conquered, he returned.  The heroic journey was completed and after he died, monuments were built in his honor.

Sakuntala was the title character of our second reading, but she really wasn't the heroine of the story.  Our hero was King Dusyanta.  For his journey, he is already away from home when our story begins.  He sees the woman of his dreams and decides that he can't live without her.  Unlike many stories of true love, he decides to make her one of his wives.  He gets a few points off for this.  In most stories of true love, two people end up together.  In this one, the number of people together will be a little larger.  It doesn't really fit the modern ideal, but it might work for the time it was written.  He gets a few more points off when he can't remember who she was.  Now I know that it was a curse and not his fault, but heroes need to be able to overcome these minor obstacles.  Eventually he finds his ring and the curse is lifted.  But, it takes Dusyanta a long time to find his wife and son so they can be reunited.  All is well in the end as they makeup and become a family.

Sir Gawain certainly fits the mold of heroes of today.  He may not be as perfect as King Arthur would like him to be, but he does his best.  He rises to the challenges he faces, and takes full responsibility for his actions.  His journey follows the typical path of having him leave home and then return.  One big difference however, is that his obstacles are more mental than physical.  Sir Gawain has to defeat his urges more than monsters.  He prooves worthy by resisting the opportunity to sleep with a woman he finds more beautiful than anyone in the world.  He doesn't tell the complete truth about their encounters, but he does do the right thing.  He even accepts a badge of shame that he decides to wear for the rest of his days.

Daoism doesn't really fit in to the heroic journey, so the least said on this the better.  Neo works for explaining the concept, but since it wasn't really a reading, I'll choose not to evaluate his heroic journey.

Oedipus doesn't really have enough success in the end to be called a hero.  He does follow the heroic journey a little bit.  He leaves home, although he is dumped and doesn't leave willingly.  He journeys to a different land and has success as evidenced by the fact that he was adopted by the king and was next in line for the throne.  He then returns to his original home and kills his original father and marries his original mother.  Oedipus's value as a hero is tough to evaluate.  He had a lot of interference in his life and many of the choices that were made were not his own.  But, it would be hard to evaluate any ending involving the murder of your father and incest with your mother that produces children being rated as anything other than a failure.  It works as a story, but it is not so good as a tale of a hero.

The Wife of Bath is sort of a feminist heroine.  She doesn't accomplish great deeds in the traditional sense.  She does have a journey, but we join it in progress.  She has some nice reasons for her views, but in the end, they are just her views and they may be more self serving than heroic.  I'll give her points for effort because she lived in a time where Wonder Woman and Buffy would have had a hard time achieving success.  Words are all she has, and she tells a good tale.  She may not win many converts, but she is clearly a woman ahead of her time.

Beowulf certainly models what people think of as a hero.  He has superstrength, is a master of combat and in the end, leads his people to great victories.  He follows the heroic journey by leaving home to seek out adventure.  He is probably a little better than some of the others because his journey is made to help other people and is not self serving.  Sure, he will get a little more fame and reward, but the Danes are the ones who really stand to benefit from his involvement.  After his victories abroad, he returns home and does all the right things and becomes a leader to his people.  Even in old age, he has a few tricks left and conquers a dragon.  It costs him his life and costs his people even more since he will no longer be able to defend them.  But, he was not supernatural and his days were coming to an end soon anyway.  Clearly Beowulf is a top rate hero and many of his traits are still in evidence in the media's depictions of heroes being used today in both fantasy and real life.

Othello is a little tougher to evaluate.  We come into the story after most of his heroic deeds have been performed.  It is a little bit like meeting a gunfighter in old age.  You can see that he used to be great, but opportunity does not allow him to show what he is capable of doing.  Everything we actually see in Othello can be deemed to be negative.  We know of the positives, but they just don't happen in our story.  He ends up being a guy who beats his wife, plots to kill her, and then successfully completes his plot.  Rather than take accountability for his crimes, he takes the coward's way out and chooses suicide.  He would have to be at the lower end of our hero scale and he only gets there at all based on some stories of past greatness that are not really fleshed out too well in the play.

Final Rankings
1)  Beowulf  (The perfect hero in his younger years who falters late in life just because of old age in trying to recapture his previous glory.)
2)  Sir Gawain (He has some similar traits with Beowulf but he doesn't possess any super strength.  I almost ranked him number one.)
3)  Gilgamesh (He might rank higher, but since he is part supernatural we have to rank him below the mere mortals.)
4)  Dusyanta (great in battle, not as great in love)
5)  Wife of Bath (She is a heroine in her own mind.)
6)  Othello (He has plenty of negatives including the killing of his own wife.)
7)  Oedipus (He ranks below Othello because he not only kills one parent, but he sleeps with the other.  It is tough to go lower than that.)
Not Ranked:  Daoism