David C. McCullough’s quotation: “History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal.” contains a moral that I strongly agree with. This quotation can be interpreted differently depending on the reader. As for me, I believe that McCullough meant that truth is never fully revealed, and who the hero is; depends entirely on the reader. He also aims to shine a light on literatures completion of history. I agree with this quotation because I share the same views about the ‘incomplete truth’, ‘heroes vs. villains’ and, the ‘power of text’.
In my opinion, history is twisted storytelling. The events that take place are told from the perspective of the narrator, which in most cases is biased towards their side. This is why the ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ could never be completely identifiable, since each side has its own. The ‘heroes’ of one side are the ‘enemies’ of the other. I could relate to this personally but in the world of sports. The scenario that comes to mind is one where I was watching my favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers, play. As the tied game was approaching the final whistle, a player from the opposing team scored a shot at the buzzer to win the game. Of course, to the opposing team, that player is the hero. However, in my case, I perceive him as nothing but the villain that took my side down. And, if myself and a fan from the opposing side, were to both comment on the game; our answers would extremely different.
Moreover, I believe history is an ‘incomplete truth’. The narrators deliver only what they desire for the readers to know. In most cases, that means they only convey the happy and glorious messages while leaving out the hardships and ill-favored details. Another element that plays into the untruthfulness of published history is the tweaks and changes it undergoes. When you place these two factors together, it ironically seems that some ‘history’ may only be loosely based on true events. An example of that could be something as simple as a kid not telling the whole truth to their parents. I can remember a time when I had found a watch that my mother had lost, behind the bed. Naturally, I grabbed it and gave it to my mother.
...e characters consumed their time adjusting all sorts of documents to make the world of the past seem favorable to the party by altering it. Now we use a few trusted online sources, most of our general knowledge originates from these sources. These could easily be deliberately altered. Thinking about it, when was the last time you saw someone use an encyclopedia? Most people use Google or Wikipedia as their sources. We put trust into these sources when we have no idea where they come from, the information comes from people that voluntarily put them up.
What makes a hero or a villain? A hero is defined as a person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. By this definition, there existed countless heroes in America during the 1800’s in relation to slavery. There were many abolitionists, particularly from the North, that exhibited courageous attitudes. It was these heroes that taught the southerners, who believed their lives could only prevail if slavery survived and expanded westward, what they knew was morally right (3, 92).
In a play, there are always heroes and villains. Sometimes, one can not always tell who are the heroes and villains. William Shakespeare, in his play, Julius Caesar, shows the difference of heroes and villains using the senators of Rome to show the difference between heroes and villains. The hardest character to determine was the hero Brutus, by analyzing his loyalty, background, and his intentions, one can determine that Brutus was a hero to Rome.
The definition of a hero is subjective. Accordingly, Robert Ray believes the hero is able to be divided into three categories: the outlaw, official and composite hero. In most cases, a hero can be categorized into one of these categories. Through the examination of Jekyll and Hyde, the Batman movie from 1943, and film of Batman in 1989, qualities of the hero will be depicted as a function of time.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
In every story there seems to be villains and heroes, but what if it seems like there are only villainous people? In Wuthering Heights there is only one man who can only be slightly connected to being a hero, Heathcliff ("Wuthering Heights"). There were also heros and villains in the other stories. In Beowulf there is Beowulf as the hero and Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon as the villains. In Beowulf the villains are all slayed by Beowulf and he saves the Danes. Another example is Arthur becoming the hero in Le M...
When tales of heroes are so grandiosely told through poems and stories often too wild to be real, the emphasis of heroism is shown through their journeys rather than their characteristics. They are in terms heroes without any real humane flaw; through the analysis of these two tales it’s, apparent that they share many similarities in the themes, but the traits of the protagonists and the reasonings behind the choices they made until their demise were entirely different. In these pieces of literature the villains are also in a limelight of their own, making one question, “Who was actually in the right all along? Who’s really to blame?” The antagonists are as infamous as the protagonist themselves are famous like a balancing act; only one of equal prowess can take down another. Items of value, recognition, and the art of gifting are shared through these epic poems but are the heroes in accepting them, the same?
“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”
In Lee Masterson’s, “Creating Villains People Love to Hate”, she illustrates how villains who lack proper motive and composure lead readers to push away from any emotional interest from the plot itself. By explaining her argument on how every villain should be portrayed and illustrated, through a general and broad sense, readers are properly able to understand why certain villains may not contribute fully to a plot through her appeal to logos. However, in their articles, Fischoff and Freeman both tackle their arguments of “Heroes and Villains” from different angles and perspectives. Fischoff illustrates a similar relationship of villains directly through a cinematic aspect by the impact it has had on the film industry. In addition, Freeman’s
There are so many ideas and so many concepts of what a hero or a villain is. Heroes and villains are mostly just narrowed down to being the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ guy, but there are so many different views as to what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. So, there are so many different views as to what a hero or villain is. According to the dictionary, a hero is a person noted for courageous acts or nobility of character.
What are the differences between heros and villains? A hero is someone who is willing to fight to the death to help someone else. A villain is soeone who will do bad at any cost, whether someone gets hurt or not. The epic poem, The Odyssey, has both heros and villains. The Odyssey is about a king named Odysseus who is fighting his way home to get back to his wife, and son, while fighting monsters and obsticals. The main character, Odysseus, could be considered botha hero and a villain because, he fights hard to get home while being brave, and determaned, but he kills along the way at no cost which makes him a villain. Therefore, Odysseus is mostly a monster because he could have let all of the people go and not kill them.
Heroes and villains are seen differently through the eyes of each individual person, not all heroes and villains are recognized because of their actions. A hero can be someone like your mom, who has done everything they possibly could to make you happy and inspire you to be someone important in life. And a villain can be someone like President Donald Trump America great again by taking back all immigrants back to Mexico. Though people might disagree with President Trump being a villain and see him as a hero, because a lot of people think these immigrants should go back to their home town.
The main difference between a villain and a hero are his morals and his ethics. Both morals and ethics relate to how one perceives right and wrong. However, morals is how one perceives right and wrong on an individual level, while ethics has to do with a group of people, and is usually given from an outside source, for example religion or profession. Hero ethics are to uphold what’s right and make sure justice is carried out. While a villains ethics are to cause havoc and chaos.
For a time, the main characters in a story, poem, or narrative were easily classified as either being a hero or a villain. A hero would be easy to identify by the traits he'd possess, such as bravery, honesty, selflessness, trustworthiness, courage, leadership, and more. The villain would be easy to identify as well, possessing traits such as maliciousness, deceitfulness, immorality, dark, wishing harm upon others, and more. But what if the character lacked the natural heroic qualities but wasn't a villain either? What if the person displayed personality flaws that would traditionally be associated with a villain, but has heroic intentions? These questions were finally answered with the emergence of the anti-hero in literature.
History is no more confined to a monolithic collection of facts and their hegemonic interpretations but has found a prominent space in narratives. The recent surge in using narrative in contemporary history has given historical fiction a space in historiography. With Hayden White’s definition of history as a “verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse” literature is perceived to be closer to historiography, in the present age (ix). History has regained acceptance and popularity in the guise of fiction, as signified by the rising status of historical fiction in the post colonial literary world.