“Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

            Fitzgerald, of all novelists, would know how to make a hero tragic. Though I did not like Fitzgerald’s ending to the “The Great Gatsby”, it was an interesting book in not only the plot but of the underlining messages that Fitzgerald was trying to release. One of the underlining messages was simple: can anybody be a hero and not be tragic? “Of course they can!” Some writers would say, before they write an amateur novel that isn’t half as good as anything with Fitzgerald’s name on it.  Obviously, there are writers who can write a half-decent novel and let the hero have a good life, but 99.8% of the great novels we read in school and trade with our friends at lunch are not happy-go-lucky novels. The hero is typically somebody that appears weaker than the rest of the characters in the beginning of the novel (or at least somebody that has not appeared as extraordinary as the rest).  So why do we need to read about somebody weak, rather than the cliché hero that is naturally strong and fearless and brave? Shane Koyczan, a new age poet, answers beautifully: “Because we see ourselves in them”.

            Analyzing the ‘hero must be weak to become strong’ is just another piece of The Hero’s Journey, but the affect it has on modern culture is more extraordinary than ever. Every movie we see, every book we read, that actually makes an imprint in our lives are focused on weaknesses. Joseph Campbell, the “father” of The Hero’s Journey, explains that our need to have a weak character as the hero is because we see ourselves as heroes. We have the desire, naturally, to want to give our life a meaning, which generally means to be selfless. Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, and so on, have portrayed the perfect hero we want to be. Sadly, most of us are either too ordinary to make it to that moment in being a true hero or we do not gain enough courage in enough time to prove it.

            But, back to F. Scott Fitzgerald, every good book has a weak main character because we have to be able to see ourselves in the book. Whether it is a messed up billionaire in The Great Gatsby or a “young sport” who thinks he is perfect, we need somebody that we can hope for when we lack the ability to give hope toward ourselves. The entire point of reading a fictional book is to live a life that is not ours, and how can we do that if the character is already brave and strong and perfect? Why can we not find a character better than ourselves to look at as a role model? Simple: we are flawed creatures, which is why we need flawed heroes.