Myths and heroes: A hero can be admired, but is it a requirement?

        I'm going to talk about the notion « Myths&Heroes ».

First of all, i have to tell you the meaning of the terms.

A Hero can be perceived as a person who fight for the wellbeing of the society. It can be a real person admired for what he has achieved or a mythological or fictional character in a novel or a film.

A myth can be a story about gods or supernatural beings or a popular tradition helping to forge a collective identity.

Each culture has his own myths.

        As I said, a hero can be admired, but is it a requirement ?

To answer the question, I am going to focus on 2 heroes : Gandhi and Malcom X.

        Some heroes are admired because of their achievements or the messages they want to spread. They represent a model for everyone, their charity can't be contested.

        Ghandi is a relevant example of this kind of hero.

My first document is an excerpt of his autobiography, it lists the most important dates of his life. This emblematic figure of India was born in 1869. He was an attourney in London and had been sent in South Africa in 1883. Once arrived, he had been appaled at the denial of civil liberties and political rights to Indian Immigrants. He stayed 20 years there and led a lot of campaigns to avoid poverty, to expand woman's rights and to put an end to discrimination. He returned to India in 1914. He continued his fight there to protest British Opression in India.

He wanted to challenge British Empire to provoke it, expecting a reaction from its part.

His ultimate goal was self rule for India.

        Gandhi never used strength to be heard, he chose to teach a passive resistance by boycotting everything british, by telling people to refuse to pay taxes or by doing fasts for example.

        His personnality made him a hero and had a huge impact on people thanks to his human qualities : modest, brave, humble, fair etc

        By this way, if we are against discrimination and if we want peace and equalty (Ithink evrybody should want that), Gandhi and his fights can't be critisized and he only can be admired.

        Now lets move on to controversial heroes, I mean... Heroes who are models for some people but bad for other. To illustrate this, I chose Malcom X.

He was a black man, born in 1925, who early lost his father. His mother had been declared crazy so after that a couple of white people took care of him.

        At school, Malcom X was very good and well integrated but one day a teacher told him that his wish to become a lawyer wasn't realistic for a negro.

Therefore, he left school, he became a delinquent and was put in prison during 6 years where he developed his idea « Nation of Islam ».

For his admirers, he was a courageous defender of the afroamerican's rights but his detractors reproached him racism because he encouraged violence against white people and he wanted superiority of black people instead of equality.

Hence, he is not admired by everyone because he tried to help a people by attacking another.

We can call it an antihero.

        To conclude, for some heroes, nobody can find them to coward or reproach them to defend bad ideas. Everybody recognize they are particular and admire them.

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