Portrayals of Heroism in Two Short Stories

Quammen tells the story of the coming-of-age and coming-of-heroism David, an eleven-year-old boy. The story is specifically about his learning to separate himself from his father and his father's powerful influence (as well as his mother's influence). In the context of heroism, this discovery of himself and his strength is utterly vital to his own survival, as he carries his father's body miles in great suffering. He completes this heroic feat in order to save his father, but, ironically, his father is long dead and he saves himself inadvertently through his love for his father.

Willi Varig, the hero in Bly's story, is a grown man, both when the reader meets him and back when he performed his act of heroism. His act, unlike David's, does save lives other than his own, or at least that is what the story suggests.

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using on one's own suffering. David's subtle movement toward the awakening that will culminate in his heroism begins perhaps when he sees his father's weakness when his father tries to blame him for the accidental shooting. The boy refuses to shoulder the blame, as the reader sees in his inner workings: "His father could no longer hurt him as he once could, because the boy was coming to understand him. His father could not help himself" (429). Ironically, this seeing his father as helpless, as weak, as human and not an infallible adult, is crucial in his own awakening and independence, and later in the act of heroism which he performs to save his father but which results in his saving himself. To survive, the boy must help the man, the son must first grow beyond the father internally, in preparation for the self-trust which leads to the self-forgetting of heroism. "Self-forgetting," here refers not to a complete blanking out of one's self-consciousness, but instead a placing of another's welfare over one's own concerns, even if those concerns involve great suffering, both physically and psychologically. When the father is physically hurt and reveals his weakness of character, his human weakness, David sees that in order for the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Willi Willi, David Willi, Willi Bly's, Talk Heroes, Evergreen Park, David Quammen, Willi Varig, Carol Bly, David Walking, save father, act imagination, love father, weakness father, endured torture, father mother, david quammen, david willi, one's own, heroic act,
Approximate Word count = 1736
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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