Term Paper on "Heroes Among Heroes: Aristotle, Homer, and Hector"

Term Paper 4 pages (1213 words) Sources: 1+ Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Heroes Among Heroes: Aristotle, Homer, And Hector of the Iliad

Heroes among Heroes in War and the Everyday Life':

Homer the Author and Hector of the Iliad: A "Certeaulean" Viewpoint

In his book The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) the French historian and cultural theorist Michel de Certeau introduces the terms 'strategies' and 'tactics' as a point of departure for explaining his theory of the tension and interplay between overt (i.e., strategic) and covert (i.e., tactical) cultural and other practices of everyday life. Stepping back two millennia into the ancient monarchical and martial milieu of Hellenic Greece, land of Homeric legend, one may see within (as a Certeaulean high-born 'strategist' who becomes a war-wounded, ultimately defeated tactician) Homer's Hector of Troy, a deeply virtuous albeit imperfect hero: Homer's Trojan warrior Prince: a mortal who fights and dies while straddling (always uneasily) the worlds of military heroism and domestic devotion; public bravery and private despair; the reluctantly exceptional (a dutiful Hector dressed imposingly for battle in full military armor) and the yearningly commonplace (wistful Hector drinking in a last poignant view of his baby son weeping, scared, at the sight of the father he no longer recognizes, and that the very sight of now terrifies.) Hector is Homer's hero, and, by (Homer's design) a most reluctant and wistful one: a high-born princely military strategist by birthright and right past battlefield achievement and genius; a brave; poignant; and broken-hearted tactician by circumstance and fate.

Within his The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), Michel de Certeau further suggests, that the exercise of 'strategies' falls within the narrow purview of the (for example) corporate; military; managerial; or cultural elite among a civilization; society, group or e.g., the bosses in charge. As Homer's Iliad begins, Hector is clearly a leader and strategist by birthright; by past military achievement; and by current station in life as he departs from his royal visit to Menelaus and Sparta with Paris (and, as it turns out, Helen) for home.

Hector is Priam's first-born son; the embodiment of gravitas and duty; a military (i.e., strategic) genius; the handsome, brave, and much beloved heir to Troy: hardly an ordinary man. Yet Hector the man, off the battlefield and in private domestic life with Andromache and their baby son, is somehow touchingly human; movingly and humanly ordinary in ways most distinct from his arch-rival and his younger brother alike. Hector's, by contrast, is a gentle and unassuming manner; a clear and objective viewpoint, and a deep concern for the common good: his people's.

So Hector is at first shocked, and then deeply troubled, at his initial realization of his brother Paris's reckless impetuousness at having actually stowed Menopause's runaway bride Helen aboard en route back to Troy. This is a move that cannot be afforded, but Paris's practically-minded brother knows this too late. Hector thinks immediately, though, of the inevitable costly and painful ramifications of this intra-island abduction: for his father's vulnerable Kingdom, in particular while Paris continues staring into Helen's eyes.

In all of these ways, then, and also by virtue of the inherent and exquisitely sensitive selfhood that Hector's creator Homer gives to him in particular and no one else within the Iliad or elsewhere, on and off the battlefield, Hector is perhaps Homer's very own hand-created hero: like the author of the Iliad himself, by reputation, plain spoken; direct; forthright. Hector, like his author with no sight, intuits with sensitive accuracy long before he needs, physically, to see on the Trojan battlefield itself.

Yet from the start of Homer's Iliad, circumstances ever beyond Hector's control; that lead tragically (or at least partly so from an… READ MORE

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