Portrayals of Heroism in Two Short Stories

David Quammen, in the short story "Walking Out," and Carol Bly, in the short story "Talk of Heroes," portray a hero as an individual who forgets himself, and his own suffering, in order to think of another person and act in a way which is meant to help that other person. This choice of the other over the self seems in both stories to be a feat of great will and independent thought, as if placing another above oneself is an act which defies some drive for self-preservation within. While both of these stories portray heroism in this light, there are important differences between those two portrayals, differences which, along with similarities, will be discussed here.

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

Category: Literature - P