Hao Chen, Period 7, 10/14/2023

Hao Chen

Period 7 

11/14/2023

Modern Mythology 2024 

Research Paper

Recently in class we discussed the idea of the evolution of heroes from Greek mythology to contemporary times and what is the difference between them. Such as that Greek heroes are born special( child of gods or kings), suffer physical damage,  are noble characters with a fatal flaw that will end their life, and much more. Whereas in current times the hero is most likely to be born from a humble background, is usually noble with little to no flaw, and suffers mostly from psychological damage. 

For example, let's compare two famous heroes, one from Greek mythology, Odysseus from the Odyssey, and a superhero from the current times, Spiderman from Spiderman. Odysseus has two backgrounds, one that is not known by most is that he is the great grandson of Hermes and one that is known by most people which is that he is the king of Ithaca. He suffered from a lot of physical damage from the way it took him to go home, and he has a fatal flaw of hubris over his intelligence. Although in the poem he didn’t die from the flaw his crew member suffered instead as he is the only to return from the journey. Now when we turn back to Spiderman, he is a normal student from a normal family until he was bitten by the spider which gave him the super power. He suffered a lot of psychological damage from the death of his uncle Ben knowing that he could have said his uncle if he stopped the criminal. Due to the death of his uncle he developed a sort of noble characteristic and followed the code of greater power equal to greater responsibility. 

These changes occur because as we discussed in class in the times of Greek the ruling class want to display themself as these divine people appointed by gods to rule over them and they are qualified because they have completed these impossible tasks as a display of their power. They also wanted to put ideas into the common people that even these divine heroes died for their kingdom in wars and so the common people should do the same. Now the idea of a hero is more toward the entertainment side with movies, comics, cartoons, and much more. They are more so there to set a moral standard for people to follow and show the good qualities appreciated by society especially for children. That is why most of the heroes come from humble background ;to show to the people that they can do the same even with the humble background. 

As we progress through the Greek unit and in the future the Norse unit we are going to encounter more of these ancient heroes. From these ancient heroes we can identify more differences and even similarities between them and contemporary heroes. We can even spot the differences between the Greek heroes and the Norse heroes due to the changes in location and culture between these two different civilizations. Together we can understand how these myths, folklores, fantasies, fairy tales and legends depicting heroes let us understand the culture from the civilization it came from. 

Sources 

1 Heros teacher’s resources 

https://www.cam.ac.uk/system/files/heroes_teacher_resources_.pdf

2 Forgeard, Author Valerie. “Traits of Modern-Day Heroes: Beyond Superpowers and Capes.” Brilliantio, 29 Sept. 2023, brilliantio.com/what-defines-a-hero-in-modern-society/. 

3 Tolentino, Cierra. “Odysseus: Greek Hero of the Odyssey.” History Cooperative, 15 Aug. 2023, historycooperative.org/odysseus-greek-hero-of-the-odyssey/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20unlike%20many%20Greek,a%20famous%20trickster%20and%20thief.