Critical Lense Essay , Brannigan

Danny Feiler
Mr. Brannigan
The quote by Umberto Eco, seen in Travels in Hyperreality, 1986, “ The real hero is always a hero by mistake”, means that every hero from stories that have been true hero’s, are the ones who are modest and pure and don’t mean to be a hero. I agree with this statement because it makes perfect sense and can be proven true through many works of literature. One book that has evidence to prove this statement true is the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a story about a man who tries to change himself for the love of his life, but in the end realizes that money can’t buy happiness. Another story that has evidence to prove the statement true is the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, a play about a timid unconfident girl who needs to learn how to be comfortable with herself, her brother who wants to break away from his family, and their mother who wants to life her life through her children’s shoes.
The Great Gatsby has many pieces of evidence that support the statement that every pure hero is clueless that he would become a hero in the end of the story. The main character in this story, Jay Gatsby, is the character who becomes a true hero at the end of the story without any intent to do so. He becomes a hero in the story when his murder is foreshadowed and he is then murdered, his friend Nick Carraway soon after realizes how much of a generous and heroic man Gatsby was. A piece of evidence that shows how Jay Gatsby had no intent to become a hero was simple, the only thing Gatsby cared about in the whole story was the love of his life Daisy, even though she symbolized a sense of false innocence with all of the white clothes that she wore. While all Gatsby cared about doing was winning over Daisy, he had no intentions to become so significant to others in the process, he may have changed people such as Nick Carraway’s life, he definitely did not go into the story trying to do so.
One more piece of literature that proves the statement that every real hero has no intentions of being a hero in the beginning of the story is the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The character in this story who can prove Umberto Eco’s statement to be true is Jim O’Connor, a responsible man who is seen as heroic when he explains to Laura how to be comfortable with her self and to not be scared of society. Symbolism referring Laura to a very fragile glass unicorn, was used to show the change that Jim had on her. The fact that he changed Laura for the better proved him worthy as a true hero because Laura’s way of life was prohibiting her to live her own life. The evidence that shows that Jim O’Connor had not intended to be a hero by the end of the story is that he wasn’t exactly a nice man who would go out of his way to help a girl like Laura, he was actually being mean to Laura by leading her on but it turned out to be better for her in the end of the play, making Jim O’Connor fit the perfect description of a real hero who did not attend on being a hero.
In conclusion, the two main points of evidence that I have used to prove Umberto Eco’s statement to be true are Jay Gatsby’s generosity and inspiration towards other people and Jim O’Connor equipping Laura Wingfield to be able to live her life free of self pity. “The real hero is always a hero by mistake…” means that in order to be a true pure hero, you must let it happen, you can’t try to be a hero or else you won’t be considered a pure hero if even a regular hero at all. All of this evidence that supports the statement all leads back at how one defines the word hero, a hero can be a rich man who shows extreme generosities, or a working man who teaches a young woman about life, a hero could even be an eleventh grade English student trying to win over the opinions of his reader audience.