Roles of Heroes

Marcus Anderson
3/4/12
Block 4

Roles of Heroes

Heroes are defined as many different things and different opinions from other people. To many people a hero is somebody saves lives from danger or somebody kids look up to and call them there hero because they did something on TV that was fascinating to them. Even in stories, there are different types of heroes and all described differently. To me heroes are people that save lives continuously no matter what the situations are because they have the bravery and heart to save people.
Being a hero can lead to greatness toward people or confident gained by people. For example, in the text of “Beowulf” the Geats believed that Beowulf was going to save them from this monster named Grendel but in the film Christianity, God, was a factor from stopping Grendel trying to kill the Geats. In the text, the Geats believed in Beowulf throughout the whole story but in the film the Geats believed in God and Beowulf, as the film goes on the Geats started to believe in God more than Beowulf. For example, Unferth and Beowulf’s wife both started to wear crosses either around their necks or on clothing.
Today heroes are defined as being brave, honest, and trustworthy, inspiring and never giving up. These heroes have jobs that involve helping people like being a police officer fighting crime, firefighters, marines/army and citizens that care about other people that are in danger. Today people still depend on God to save them or that God is the reason they are alive after a serious disaster has happened, people today depend on God to solve every problem and to make this world peaceful. For example, in the text Beowulf the Geats had to depend on someone else that was from another country and not from their own country and it was only one person they depended on as of today we depend on many types of heroes to save us and keep us safe. In the film, they did depend on Beowulf but most likely God because he was watching over them.
The importance of heroes is very important to the people because heroes can make society safer for people to live in and be protected. Before the present day, everyone depended on one person that would lead us to victory in war but today it’s different. Instead of depending on one person, we depend on many different groups of people that will keep us safe and lead us to victory. For example, in the text everybody depended on him to kill the dragon that was attacking the village even though he was old but then another hero came along named Wiglaf who helped Beowulf defeat the dragon and he was the new leader and also crowned as king of the Geats. In the film, same as the text everybody was depending on Beowulf to kill the dragon but there was no other hero coming along to help Beowulf he did it all by himself while Wiglaf was watching, even though Wiglaf didn’t do anything to help Beowulf he was still crowned as king of the Geats and the new leader.
Everybody has their opinions/differences about heroes and how are people defined as heroes that’s why we so many of them today. Sometimes people that we call heroes don’t have to have jobs that involve saving people, for example, your parents, friends and siblings can your hero for teaching you how live on you own and how to be successful in life. All these reasons and supporting details show how heroes are different from present day and before, how they are defined differently and we can’t depend on just one person anymore we have to believe that other heroes will arrive and support the ones that have been saving us and keeping us safe from danger in the environment and overseas.