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Monday, June 13, 2005
The Hero
In each of the umpteen books I've read over the last months you find a hero. The individual author's concept of hero distinguishes these books from one another much more than does the plot, setting, time, etc. A book I read last night showed off a hero who said to another character, "You don't want to make an enemy of me," and later the hero shot that character between the eyes...cold-blooded execution, but he was the hero. Another hero refused to complete his assignment which was to shoot a man who certainly deserved to be shot. Then there is the hero who rigidly applies the law to one and all and for whom the law is a religion, but whose wife is a vigilante killer and he looks the other way. In another book the hero is a muddle-headed type who never really gets down to it. He doesn't act so much as he angsts. He's the hero because of the effect of his emotional upheaval on all the other characters. Another hero is a practically robotic fellow, a creature of great intellect but no appreciable reactions and interactions. He's the hero because his analyses decisively influence the plot. No females come quickly to mind as heroine other than Stephanie Plum in the Evanovich books about her career as bounty hunter. She's the heroine because no matter what, she's still standing when the dust settles. Nothing can extinguish a person with her combination of neediness and brainless elan.
In my opinion John LeCarre creates heroes with the greatest complexity.A LeCarre hero is the heart of everyperson, all of it, good and bad and in between. No one should close one of those books without feeling found out. The worst are good, the best are bad, embarrassing, depressing, hopeful, grim, completely, painfully real and worth knowing. My guess is that future generations will consider his thrillers the greatest writing of the second half of the 20th century.
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