What Is A Hero?

And how do you become one?

Rory Stewart as post imperial hero.

I have been listening with some fascination to Rory Stewart’s Radio Four series on the history of the hero:

The Long History of the Hero

Stewart reveals how he wanted to model himself on Alexander the Great - he served as deputy governor in Iraq - but modified his ideas after his experiences in the active service in the army made him re-think the value of physical courage. His ‘bravery’, he observed, was rather like a gluten intolerant person admiring a gluten tolerant person. It was just the way he was, no big deal. He also walked in the footsteps of Alexander for 21 months crossing Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, Heroic? Yes,but only in the way running marathons for at the age of 80 or swimming across the channel for good causes is heroic. Which is to say, somewhat, but not quite in the Alexander category, a category to which Stewart no longer wishes to belong. That, for him - derring do and slaughter - is schoolboy stuff.

Stewart is male and the history of heroes is largely male. The idea of heroism is, after all, a very male one. (Heroines there are in history, but they are fewer and usually there for different reasons). Like Stewart, this was certainly the template I grew up with as a boy. He wanted to be Alexander, whereas I didn’t know who Alexander was. But I knew that I wanted to be a hero - of some kind.

I was an even more unlikely hero than Stewart. I don’t know how the idea even made it into my head, and if you had asked me, I certainly would have denied wanting to be a hero. It was little more an unarticlated drive. But yet my ambitions had something in common with the hero. I wanted to be admired, to be successful, above all, to be noticed. It didn’t matter in what field I achieved this in. Standing out in some way was the key.

True, my devotion to being a hero lacked the idea of self-sacrifice (although my admiration for self sacrifice often comes out through characters in my books) but the rest of the psychological makeup was there. The question was how to achieve my hero status. And there I was stumped. I couldn’t be an athlete, or a footballer or even a team leader in an ordinary business organisation. I was too lazy and too chaotic. That left me with few options. I had the knack of writing, so that would have to do.

(I don’t think I was unusually vain or unusally ambitious. Most people, or at least most men, want to be heroes of some sort - even if it is only a hero to their children, or their loved ones, or their community. Not everybody has to be Achilles to fulfil the hero instinct.)