Will You Be My Hero?

This winter break was nice because my family and I stayed at home instead of going to California to visit relatives like we do every Christmas. I took a Calculus II (M 408L) at Houston Community College everyday from nine to twelve-thirty and only had Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off. Besides doing Calculus homework and hanging out with friends, I found myself in several conversations with my mom. Topics ranged from her childhood stories to her outlook on life and on the future. Amidst the conversations, I reaffirmed that my mom is truly my hero.

But what is a hero? What qualities or traits does a hero exhibit? In reading (skimming) my peers posts, it appears that many people think of imaginary or superhuman characters as heroes. However, even as I was growing up, I never thought of a cartoon/fictional characters as heroes. My mom told me that when she was little, her hero was a school teacher because they were so smart and knew everything. She said that growing up poor in Hong Kong, there were no other “successful” people to look up to. Everyone else around her had problems in their lives and was struggling with life. She noted that when I was little, my heroes weren’t my teachers, like hers were, but rather, firemen, policemen, and other men in uniform. My mother concluded that the my generation’s definition of a hero has changed from hers because when she was growing up, a hero was someone who was successful and made something of their life—a role model; whereas my generation’s definition of a hero is someone that does good for society—a savior or selfless person.

In my short eighteen years of life so far, I have determined that my mother is my hero. According to Campbell, “the hero, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms” (Campbell 19-20). My mom, as I have mentioned in previous discussion boards, had to overcome countless obstacles to establish herself in the United States. She moved to the States to attend college and start a family. Now as a successful engineer at a large engineering company, she has raised two sons in the suburbs of Houston and is now sending them to college. My mom has inspired me to try my hardest at everything that I do.

In her discussion board, Liz claims that “not everyone can be a hero in the way that Campbell describes.” Campbell writes, about the modern hero, that “the modern individual who dares to heed the call…, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding… It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse” (Campell 391). However, I contend that everyone can be a hero in someone’s eyes. Campbell’s description of a hero is specific in the steps it takes to be a hero. However, it is ultimately up to each individual person to evaluate whether their “hero” meets the criteria. I believe that this evaluation is very subjective. Obviously, my best friends or my teachers won’t view my mother the same way I view her as a hero. My mother is MY hero because she is the one “to supply the simple clue that will give [me] courage to face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain” (Campbell 23). MY hero won’t give anyone else courage unless that person lets that hero give him or her courage.