What is a hero?

What is a hero? I think that it's a person, real or fictional, famous or anonymous who puts other people before himself. It's the reason why they are admired for their courage or their noble qualities. Another main point about a hero is that he didn't want recognition for what he achieves. But is he completely perfect? Doesn't he have an underside a dark side? First, we will see that there are many kinds of hero and we will see which one can have a dark side. Then we will see what this dark side exactly is and why heroes have it.

There is a lot of people, which are heroes for someone, but not for someone else, everything depends on the personality. Some people can, for example, have a sportsman for a hero, but this is personal. So we can say that there are two kinds of heroes: famous or not. But this distinction is still really large. If the hero is famous, it can be superman, batman or even Nelson Mandela. So we could cut this category in two others: real or fictional heroes.

I think that heroes who have a dark side need to famous. If he is not, he didn't even know that he has been a hero. The moment he was considered as a hero was really short, as a fireman for example. So heroes from that “branches” don't have, I think a dark side. About the famous heroes now, begin with those which are real. I think that they necessarily have a dark side because they have responsibilities and they have to make important choices. So sometimes, they know that are doing something people will not like, but they judge that it's necessary. But it's not all, if they have responsibilities, they have to keep some things secrets and it's why they have a kind of dark side, which is for them necessary.

About the fictional hero now. The most famous is definitely batman, but we will try to take others examples. Many fictional heroes walk a thin line between good and evil and many of them have fallen into despair, madness, into a dark side. This dark side can, for example, be in relation to an episode of the life of the hero. Let's take the example of Oliver Queen in Arrow. On the night he is the mayor of the city, everyone loves him, but on the night, he becomes, someone else, the green arrow, and kill people he considers as “bad guys”. He does that because he had to survive on a desert island for five years, and it changed him. So all fictional heroes have a dark side, and this is due to the producers. It's in their interest to have a hero who is neither perfect nor detestable. Viewers like this kind of hero who has a dark side because they want to see how they will act in secret, how they will do to not be discovered … So I think that fictional heroes have a dark side because of the commercial side.

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