“We’re on a mission from God.”

~ from The Blues Brothers screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis

The word hero is Greek, from a root that means “to protect and to serve” (incidentally the motto of the Los Angeles Police [1800 years after Jesus death] Department). A Hero is someone who is willing to sacrifice his own needs on behalf of others, like a sherpard who will sacrifice to protect and serve his flock.  At the root the idea of Hero is connected with self-sacrifice.  (Note that I use the word Hero to describe a central character or protagonist of either sex.)

PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTION

In psychological terms, the archetype of the Hero represents what Freud called the ego – that part of the personality that separates from the mother, that considers itself distinct from the rest of the human race [sew it does not get any worms]. Ultimately, a Hero is one who is able to transcend the bounds and illusions of the ego, but at first, Heroes are all ego [museum]: the I, the one, that personal identity which thinks it is separate from the rest of the group.  The journey of many Heroes is the story of that separation from the family or tribe, equivalent to a child’s sense of separation from the mother.

The Hero archetype represents the ego’s search for identity [Rubles, show them were the worms went] and wholeness. In the process of becoming complete, integrated human beings, we are all Heroes facing internal guardians, monsters, and helpers.  In the quest to explore our own minds we find teachers, guides, demons, gods, mates, servants, scapegoats, masters, seducers, betrayers, and allies, as aspects of our personalities and characters in our dreams.  All the villains, tricksters, lovers, friends, and foes of the Hero can be found inside ourselves.  The psychological task we all face is to integrate these separate parts into one complete, balanced entity.  The ego, the Hero thinking she is separate from all these parts of herself, must incorporate them to become the Self.

DRAMATIC FUNCTIONS

AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION

The dramatic purpose of the Hero is to give the audience a window into the story. Each person hearing a tale or watching a play or movie is invited, in the early stages of the story, to identify with the Hero, to merge with him and see the world of the story through his eyes.  Storytellers do this by giving their Heroes a combination of qualities a mix of universal and unique characters.

Heroes have qualities that we all can identify with and recognize in ourselves. They are propelled by universal [aka to having a job] drives that we can all understand: the desire to be loved and understood, to succeed, survive, be free, get revenge, right wrongs, or seek self-expression.

Stories invite us to invest part of our personal identity in the Hero for the duration of the experience. In a sense we become the Hero for awhile.  We project ourselves into the Hero’s psyche, so that we want to be like them.  We want to experience the self-confidence of Katharine Hepburn, the elegance of Fred Astaire, the wit of Cary Grant, the sexiness of Marilyn Monroe.

Heroes should have universal qualities, emotions, and motivations that everyone has experienced at one time or another: revenge, anger, lust, competition, territoriality, patriotism, idealism, cynicism, or despair. But Heroes must also be unique human beings, rather than stereotypical creatures or tin gods without flaws or unpredictability.  Like any effective work of art they need both universality and originality.  Nobody wants to see a movie or read a story about abstract qualities in human form.  We want stories about real people.  A real character, like a real person, is not just a single trait but unique combination of many qualities and drives, some of them conflicting.  And the more conflicting, the better.  A character torn by warring allegiances to love and duty is inherently interesting to an audience.  A character who has a unique combination of contradictory impulses, such as trust and suspicion or hope and despair, seems more realistic and human than one who displays only one character trait.

A well-rounded Hero can be determined, uncertain, charming, forgetful, impatient, and strong in body but weak in heart, all at the same time. It’s the particular combination of qualities that gives an audience the sense that the Hero is one of a kind, a real person rather than a type.

GROWTH

Another story function of the Hero is learning or growth. In evaluating a script sometimes it’s hard to tell who is the main character, or who should be.  Often the best answer is: the one who learns or grows the most in the course of the story.  Heroes overcome obstacles and achieve goals, but they also gain new knowledge and wisdom.  The heart of many stories is the learning that goes on between a Hero and a mentor, or a Hero and a lover, or even between a Hero and a Villain.  We are all each other’s teachers.

ACTION

Another heroic function is acting or doing. The Hero is usually the most active person in the script.  His will and desire is what drives most stories forward.  A frequent flaw in screenplay is that the Hero is fairly active throughout the story, but at the most critical moment becomes passive and is rescued by the timely arrival of some outside force.  At this moment above all, a Hero should be fully active, in control of his own fate.  The Hero should perform the decisive action of the story, the action that requires taking the most risk or responsibility.

SACRIFICE

People commonly think of Heroes as strong or brave, but these qualities are secondary to sacrifice – the true mark of a Hero. Sacrifice is the Hero’s willingness to give up something of value, perhaps even her own life, on behalf of an ideal or a group. Sacrifice means “making holy”.  In ancient times people made sacrifices, even of human beings, to acknowledge their debt to the spirit world, the gods, or nature, to appease those mighty forces, and to make holy the process of daily life.  Even death became sanctified, a holy act.

DEALING WITH DEATH

At the heart of every story is a confrontation with death. If the Hero doesn’t face actual death, then there is the threat of death or symbolic death in the form of a high-stakes game, love affair, or adventure in which the Hero may succeed (live) or fail (die).

Heroes show us how to deal with death. They may survive it, proving that death is not so tough. They may die and be reborn, proving that death can be transcended. They may be a Hero’s death, transcending death by offering up their lives willingly for a cause, an ideal, or a group.

True heroism is shown in stories when Heroes offer themselves on the altar of chance, willing to take the risk that their quest for adventure may lead to danger, loss, or death. Like soldiers who know that by enlisting they have agreed to give their lives if their country asks them to, Heroes accept the possibility of sacrifice.

The most effective Heroes are those who experience sacrifice. They may give up some cherished vice or eccentricity as the price of entering into a new way of life. They may return some of their winnings or share what they have gained in the Special World. They may return to their starting point, the tribe or village, and bring back boons, elixirs, food, or knowledge to share with the rest of the group.

HEROISM IN OTHER ARCHETYPES

Sometimes the Hero archetypes is not just manifested in the main character, the protagonist who bravely fights the bad guys and wins. The archetype can be manifested in other characters, when they act heroically. An unheroic character can grow to be heroic. The title character of Gunga Din begins as another archetype altogether, a trickster or clown, but by striving to be a Hero, and by sacrificing himself at a crucial moment on behalf of his friends, he earns the right to be called a Hero.  In Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi clearly manifests the archetype of the mentor through most of the story.  However, he acts heroically and temporarily wears the mask of the Hero when he sacrifices himself to allow Luke to escape the Death Star.

It can be very effective to have a villainous or antagonistic character unexpectedly manifest heroic qualities. On the sitcom level, when a character like Danny DeVito’s despicable “Taxi” dispatcher Louie suddenly reveals he has a soft heart or has done something noble, the episode wins an Emmy. A gallant villain, heroic in some ways and despicable in others, can be very appealing. Ideally, every well-rounded character should manifest a touch of every archetype, because the archetypes are expressions of the parts that make up a complete personality.

CHARACTER FLAWS

Interesting flaws humanize a character. We can recognize bits of ourselves in a Hero who is challenged to overcome inner doubts, errors in thinking, guilt or trauma from the past, or fear of the future. Weaknesses, imperfections, quirks, and vices immediately make a Hero or any character more real and appealing. It seems the more neurotic characters are, the more the audience likes them and identifies with them.

Flaws also give a character somewhere to go – the so-called “character arc” in which a character develops from condition A to condition Z through a series of steps. Flaws are a starting point of imperfection or incompleteness from which a character can grow. They may be deficiencies in a character. Perhaps a Hero has no romantic partner, and is looking for the “missing piece” to complete her life. This is often symbolized in fairy tales by having the Hero experience a loss or a death in the family. Many fairy tales begin with the death of a parent or the kidnapping of a brother or sister. This subtraction from the family unit sets the nervous energy of the story in motion, not to stop until the balance has been restored by the creation of a new family or the reuniting of the old.

In most modern stories it is the Hero’s personality that is being recreated or restored to wholeness. The missing piece may be a critical element of personality such as the ability to love or trust. Heroes may have to overcome some problem such as lack of patience or decisiveness. Audiences love watching Heroes grapple with personality problems and overcome them. Will Edward, the rich but cold-hearted businessman of Pretty Woman, warm up under the influence of the life-loving Vivian and become her Prince Charming?  Will Vivian gain some self-respect and escape her life of prostitution?  Will Conrad, the guilt-ridden teenager in Ordinary People, regain his lost ability to accept love and intimacy?

VARIETIES OF HERO

Heroes come in many varieties, including willing and unwilling Heroes, group-orientated and loner Heroes, Anti-heroes, tragic Heroes, and catalyst Heroes. Like all the other archetypes, the Hero is a flexible concept that can express many kinds of energy. Heroes may combine with other archetypes to produce hybrids like the Trickster Hero, or they may temporarily wear the mask of another archetype, becoming a Shapeshifter, a Mentor to someone else, or even a Shadow.

Although usually portrayed as a positive figure, the Hero may also express dark or negative sides of the ego. The Hero archetype generally represents the human spirit in positive action, but may also show the consequences of weakness and reluctance to act.

WILLING AND UNWILLING HEROES

It seems Heroes are of two types: 1) willing, active, gung-ho, committed to the adventure, without doubts, always bravely going ahead, self-motivated, or 2) unwilling, full of doubts and hesitations, passive, needing to be motivated or pushed into the adventure by outside forces. Both make equally entertaining stories, although a Hero who is passive throughout may make for an uninvolving dramatic experience. It’s usually best for an unwilling Hero to change at some point, to become committed to the adventure after some necessary motivation has been supplied.

ANTI-HEROES

Anti-hero is slippery term that can cause a lot of confusion. Simply stated, an Anti-hero is not the opposite of a Hero, but a specialized kind of Hero, one who may be an outlaw or a villain from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience is basically in sympathy. We identify with these outsiders because we have all felt like outsiders at one time or another.

Anti-heroes may be of two types: 1) characters who behave much like conventional Heroes, but are given a strong touch of cynicism or have a wounded quality, like Bogart’s characters in The Big Sleep and Casablanca, or 2) tragic Heroes, central figures of a story who may not be likeable or admirable, whose actions we may even deplore, like Macbeth or Scarface or the Joan Crawford of Mommie Dearest.

The wounded Anti-hero may be a heroic knight in tarnished armor, a loner who has rejected society or been rejected by it. These characters may win at the end and may have the audience’s full sympathy at all times, but in society’s eyes they are outcasts. They are often honorable men who have withdrawn from society’s corruption, perhaps ex-cops or soldiers who became disillusioned and now operate in the shadow of the law as private eyes, smugglers, gamblers, or soldiers of fortune. We love these characters because they are rebels, thumbing their noses at society as we would all like to do. Another archetype of this kind is personified in James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, or the young Marlon Brando, whose character in The Wild One acted out a new and quite different generation’s dissatisfaction with the old.  Actors like Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon, and Sean Penn carry on the tradition today.

The second type of Anti-hero is more like the classical idea of the tragic Hero. These are flawed Heroes who never overcome their inner demons and are brought down and destroyed by them. They may be charming, they may have admirable qualities, but the flaw wins out in the end. Some tragic Anti-heroes are not so admirable, but we watch their downfall with fascination because “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” Like the ancient Greeks who watched Oedipus fall, we are purged of our emotions and we learn to avoid the same pitfalls as we watch the destruction of Al Pacino’s character in Scarface, Signourney Weaver as Diane Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, or Diane Keaton’s character in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

GROUP-ORIENTED HEROES

Another distinction must be made about Heroes with respect to their orientation to society. Like the first storytellers, the earliest humans who went out hunting and gathering on the plains of Africa, most Heroes are group-orientated: they are part of a society at the beginning of the story, and their journey takes them to an unknown land far from home. When we first meet them, they are part of a clan, tribe, village, town, or family. Their story is one of separation from that group (Act One); lone adventure in the wilderness away from the group (Act Two); and usually, eventual reintegration with the group (Act Three).

Group-orientated Heroes often face a choice between returning to the Ordinary World of the first act, or remaining in the Special World of the second act. Heroes who choose to remain in the Special World are rare in Western culture but fairly common in classic Asian and Indian tales.

LONER HEROES

In contrast to the group-oriented Hero is the loner Western Hero such as Shane, Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, John Wayne’s Ethan in The Searchers, or The Lone Ranger. With this Hero type, the stories begin with the Heroes estranged from society. Their natural habitat is the wilderness, their natural state is solitude. Their journey is one of re-entry into the group (Act One); adventure within the group, on the group’s normal turf (Act Two); and return to isolation in the wilderness (Act Three). For them the Special World of Act Two is the tribe or village, which they visit briefly but in which they are always uncomfortable. The wonderful shot of John Wayne at the end of The Searchers sums up the energy of this Hero type.  Wayne is framed in a cabin doorway as an outsider forever cut off from the joys and comforts of the family.  This kind of Hero need not be limited to Westerns. It can be used effectively in dramas or action movies where a loner detective is tempted back into adventure, where a hermit or retired person is called back into society, or where an emotionally isolated person is challenged to re-enter the world of relationships.

As with group-oriented Heroes, the loner Heroes have the final choice of returning to their initial state (solitude), or remaining in the Special World of Act Two. Some Heroes begin as loners and end as group-oriented Heroes who elect to stay with the group.

CATALYST HEROES

A certain class of Hero is an exception to the rule that the Hero is usually the character who undergoes the most change. These are catalyst Heroes, central figures who may act heroically, but who do not change much themselves because their main function is to bring about transformation in others. Like a true catalyst in chemistry, they bring about a change in a system without being changed themselves.

A good example is Eddie Murphy’s character Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cops.  His personality is already fully formed and distinctive at the story’s beginning.  He doesn’t have much of a character arc because he has nowhere to go.  He doesn’t learn or change much in the course of the story, but he does bring about change in his Beverly Hills cop buddies, Taggart and Rosewood.  By comparison they have relatively strong character arcs, from being uptight and by-the-book to being hip and streetwise, thanks to Axel’s influence.  In fact, although Axel is the central figure, the villain’s main opponent, and the character with the best lines and the most screen time, it could be argued that he is not the true Hero, but the Mentor of the piece, while young Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) is the actual Hero because he learns the most.

Catalyst Heroes are especially useful in continuing stories such as episodic TV shows and sequels. These Heroes undergo few internal changes, but primarily act to help others or guide them in their growth. Of course it’s a good idea once in awhile to give even these characters some moments of growth and change to help keep them fresh and believable.

THE ROAD OF HEROES

Heroes are symbols of the soul in transformation, and of the journey each person takes through like. The stages of that progression, the natural stages of life and growth, make up the Hero’s Journey. The Hero archetype is a rich field for exploration by writers and spiritual seekers. Carol S. Pearson’s book Awakening the Heroes Within further breaks down the idea of the Hero into useful archetypes (Innocent, Orphan, Martyr, Wanderer, Warrior, Caregiver, Seeker, Lover, Destroyer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Sage, and Fool) and graphs the emotional progress of each. It’s a good guide to a deeper psychological understanding of the Hero in its many facets.  The special avenues travelled by some female heroes are described in The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness by Maureen Murdock.