When Heroes Go Down

Branching off from my post about my perception of Anse changing (and losing his hero status, at least in my opinion) in the last section of the novel, I've noticed over time that being a hero doesn't mean that you're always going to be one. In the real world, there have been many people who have been regarded as heroes, but have had their recognition fall down, following an event or the release of any information that could discredit them.

One such example is that of Joe Paterno. A legend of football coaching, "JoePa" coached Penn State's football team for 46 seasons, up until he was 84 years old (which is pretty old to be coaching football…he wound up breaking some bone almost every year near the end of his career from sideline collisions). Paterno was considered to be the winningest NCAA football coach after getting his 406th win in 2011, against Illinois (of course). At this point, Joe Paterno had already become established as a hero and as a football legend. He played prominent roles in Big Ten advertisements, and was a hero of Penn State football fans and NCAA fans alike.

This all came crashing down however during his 2011 season, following the arrest of Jerry Sandusky in November, a former assistant coach at Penn State on charges of child molestation, including numerous incidences during his tenure as a Penn State coach from 1994 through 1999. Much controversy followed, and Paterno was found to have known about what was going on, yet did little to stop it. He was fired from Penn State, and died shortly thereafter. Investigations following Paterno's death revealed that he not only knew about Sandusky's actions, but covered up these actions to try and preserve the prestige of Penn State's football program. The NCAA took away all his wins from 1998 up until his firing. His statue outside of Penn State's stadium was removed. In a matter of months, Paterno went from being recognized as one of the greatest of all time, to becoming someone who could be seen in quite an unfavorable light. (Controversy exists to this day about this event, along with Penn State's and the NCAA's reactions to it)

The point I'm trying to make here is that it takes a lot to build up hero status, but it only takes a little to tear it all down. It took me 250 pages to really see Anse as a hero, but it only took another 30 pages to change my opinion, and for Anse to lose his hero status. With Paterno, he spent 46 years building a legacy only to have it torn down in a matter of two months.

This brings up an interesting aspect of the hero: the status of being a hero is not given, but one that is earned. And just because you earn hero status doesn't mean its permanent. In fact, losing that hero status is a lot easier than gaining it. I think a lot of the reasoning behind that is human nature. It takes us longer to develop a positive opinion of someone or something than it does for us to form a negative opinion. It's hard to build up trust as opposed to tearing it down.

And that's the same dynamic we have with heroes, both literary and those in the real world. When we see someone as a hero, we've developed trust in them as a hero due to their actions and qualities. That trust has to be built up as well. You may have an idea about who the hero will be when you pick up a book for the first time, but you can't be certain until you've built up that trust about the hero. And at the same time, it doesn't take much for that trust to be lost. If a character betrays their motives (kind of like what Anse does by marrying a new wife, at least in my opinion), it really hurts their heroic status, since it's your trust in the character, their motives, and their actions that really make a hero, a hero.

In closing, I guess this points out how harsh we can be to people, real or not. It takes a lot for us to see them in a positive light, and doesn't take much to make us disregard what made them a hero. I noticed this a lot with the characters in As I Lay Dying. There seemed to be a lot of Bundren-dissing throughout the class. The Bundrens are a rather easy target to make fun of them, being a poor Mississippi family that could be seen as "white trash". It's these preexisting views of the Bundrens which make it so hard to see them as heroic. Look at them. They go through a ton of hardship to bury their mother in town. Cash loses a leg, Jewel saves the coffin (and Addie) multiple times, from roaring rivers to burning barns. Darl's there as a leading figure, since Anse doesn't do much. Vardaman doesn't have many heroic moments, but then again, he's like six years old and isn't exactly focusing on being a hero. Dewey Dell struggles with a secret throughout the journey that she can't tell anyone, and will likely continue to face following the end of the novel. These characters are heroic in their own ways, but our perception of the Bundren family already discredits their heroicness, and it doesn't help that many of the events in the endgame hurt their reputation. After all, it is hard to think of the man who's being taken away to an institution (who then proceeds to narrate about his train ride from the third person) as a hero.
 see them as heroes.

As a final note, I'd like to thank Mr. Butler, his Flow of History, and Suzanne Vega for the title of this blog post. It would be a lot more boring without them.