So, my heroes Mom and Dad. Also, Mr. H., the father of one of my friends and the coach of our Little League team, to me the very model of rectitude and probity. Not that I ever thought of him in those terms. But during one baseball season, another friend of mine, more advanced in the ways of the world, excitedly decided to tell me about the facts of life. He presented his information as if he’d been born with the knowledge: how the man’s dick went into the woman’s—well, I don’t remember the term he used; “dick” is verbatim, though. As he went on, not that he had much else to say, I was pretending to have known about such matters all along. But internally I completely rejected my friend’s outlandish claim. My reason for doing so was that Mr. H. came immediately to mind as a test case. It was simply inconceivable to me that Mr. H. had ever put his dick in my friend’s mother. No. Never. Mr. H. would never do such a thing.
Mr. L. was my clarinet teacher in Pittsburgh, before we moved to Chicago. By the measure of my experience, he was exotic—a Jewish man who drove a huge black Cadillac and was the region’s acknowledged master instructor in my instrument. I was a technically accomplished clarinetist for my young age, but Mr. L. didn’t give a damn. Technique was the easy part. He cared about tone, and he meant to rebuild mine from scratch.
He matter-of-factly informed me early on that he didn’t think I had the mouth structure to become a professional clarinetist; but he did think that with work, I could expect to become a good player. Although I had no plans at age 10 to become a professional musician, I was still crushed by his advance judgment of my inevitable failure. I resolved to put myself to the task. So we went about it for a couple of years, together once a week for half-an-hour-plus, working on my embouchure and the tone it produced.
My clarinet lessons were, unrelievedly, a difficult experience, as Mr. L.’s teaching style relied on correction of deficiency rather than praise of improvement. In truth, I wasn’t sure how far I was getting—not until my very last lesson before my family moved to Chicago. Mr. L.’s small storefront studio consisted of an armchair for him and a straight-backed chair and music stand for his pupil at the far end, facing a ring of card table chairs around the three other walls for students (and parents of students) whose lessons were upcoming. Because he typically kept students past their scheduled half hour, Mr. L. was always running late. At the end of my last lesson, he turned to the younger girl who was next up for the pupil’s chair and said to her something the like of which I had never heard from him before: “Doesn’t he have a nice tone?” Ecstasy.
Those were some of my personal heroes. Do they remind you of any of yours? Of course I had heroes I shared with others. Books, whether true or fiction, provided most of them, including such worthies as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Harriet Tubman, along with more remote characters such as David of biblical fame. In terms of preponderance of influence, this list would be seriously misleading without mention of Spider-Man.
Later on, I developed a high regard not only for some of the characters in books but also for the authors of certain books, including many quoted in the pages that follow. And actors in certain roles seemed at times to personify the greatness of the characters they played. How was it that George C. Scott playing Patton seemed somehow more Patton than Patton? Was Patton the hero—or Scott’s Patton? Meanwhile, and back to reality, what can you say about a man like Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his crippled and crashing Airbus A320 in the middle of the Hudson River and got everyone off safely? And yes, for a while in early adulthood especially, the real world of politics seemed to provide me with some examples of greatness, though I admit that more recently I have tended to adopt the advice of the psalmist: “Put not your trust in princes.”
The proximate cause of trying to reflect systematically on my hodgepodge of heroes—and more broadly on what heroism is—was a Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws in New Jersey. As usual, and arriving late as usual, my wife’s Uncle David, an Ocean Township police officer, was there. But he had recently done a remarkable thing: He’d run into a burning building to rescue a child from the fire. You’ll read a little more about him in Chapter 8.
Uncle David didn’t necessarily seem the heroic type: a good-looking ladies’ man of self-confident charm, for sure, but heroic? Yet there he was, and it turned out this was not his first such outing: In his youth, working as a lifeguard, he’d had occasion to save someone from drowning. That was two notches for him in a belt most people never try to put on. A couple years later came 9/11 and the unforgettable display of the ultimate form of heroism by so many New York City firefighters—and subsequently, a new chapter in the heroism of the American soldier.
Thus we arrive at the heart of our inquiry in the pages that follow: A hero is someone with a claim to some kind of superiority. The modern world writ large, wherever it exists on the globe today, is democratic and egalitarian, a sensibility that has thoroughly taken hold among its residents, including ourselves. What kind of claim of superiority or greatness, then, is compatible with the modern world’s democratic and egalitarian character?
To fully appreciate the defining characteristics of heroism in the modern world, it’s necessary to look as well at some of the heroic or great characters who inhabited the world prior to the spread of the spirit of democracy and equality. To understand the heroic element of Uncle David in the context of his times, we need to understand the heroic element of King David in the context of his. Because let’s face it: Although the 9/11 firefighter’s heroism fits in just fine with the modern world, we really have no place for Achilles these days. Indeed, Brad Pitt in the movie Troy notwithstanding, Achilles today often comes across as a preeningly self-centered brat. As to why Homer would write an epic poem about a narcissist with delusions of grandeur when his adversary Hector seems like the better man, well, that’s a good question.
But the reason it’s a good question is that we really need to examine the set of prejudices—modern prejudices—that lead us, if they do, to a dismissive view of the greatness of Achilles. Homer takes the heroic heart of Achilles seriously. So should we—and we will in the pages that follow.
From the influence the modern, democratic, egalitarian perspective has on views of heroism, we can see that the story of heroism also turns into a story about politics—specifically, about the relationship between the heroic type, whether it’s Achilles or a 9/11 firefighter, and political order and change. This, too, is a subject of our inquiry here.
I should make clear at the beginning that though we will be considering “greatness ancient and modern,” this investigation is not a history, in which a new view of greatness or heroism emerges in the world to grapple with and take over for an older view of heroic achievement. On the contrary, as we shall see, the type of greatness honored in the modern world has deep roots in antiquity. Nor is it so certain, on closer examination, that the modern world has rid itself once and for all of the classically heroic type.
By the end of this book, I hope you will find the latter prospect just as ominous as I do.
The origins of heroism. Immortals and mortals, the willingness to risk death, inner greatness.
The three biggest things human beings have in common are life, death, and the consciousness of both, including the ability to speak with each other about all three. Nonhuman animals may possess intelligence and self-awareness; the will to keep living or “survival instinct” may