Goodman's Story Pablo Picasso

1002 Words3 Pages

Pablo Picasso

This is a story about hero worship by Ellen Goodman. Her hero is Pablo Picasso and his great many works. He created over 13,000 paintings in his life time, just to name a few of his accomplishments. This is an impressive feet. In this essay Ellen talks about her hero as well as heroes and their portrayal in the world today. She doses not try to be humorous or put Picasso on a pedestal. She lets the reader know that she admires the man greatly but wants to be truthful about him. She compares him to other great people in the world that are admired and looked upon as heroes. She talks about the rise and fall of the ones that we look up to and how we turn our backs to them when we are finished with them. Picasso didn’t care about these things.

The tone of this essay is serious. Ellen doses not try to use humor in this piece about someone she admires greatly. She tries to inform the reader about Picasso and all that he did in his lifetime. At the beginning of the essay she takes the reader on a tour in a museum that is devoted to Picasso. She wants to empress upon the reader that Picasso’s art was great even when it was bad. When Picasso was 13 his father who was an artist gave Picasso a set of brushes and never painted again.

Ellen tries to enthrall the reader with her respect and admiration for her subject. She wants the reader to see Picasso through her eyes. She doses this by taking the reader on a tour through the museum. She walks the reader through with her words giving you a virtual tour. Then she takes the reader on a journey through his life and with her words tries to connect to the reader emotionally. By the time Picasso turned 40 he was already a legend. When other hero’s reach this age such as sports stars, actors, actresses, and musicians they have reached the tail end of their careers. Some go gently into the night while others stay around as long as they can and go kicking and screaming into that night. Like Neil Young said “its better to burnout than fade away.”(Young, 1979). In this country we want our hero’s to stay beautiful and pristine. We want our rock stars to keep making hits and never change.

Open Document