Heroic Hero Comparison Essay

Why do some men look up to a well-known legendary British king while others admire an elder sociology professor suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease? Literature portrays realistic and fictional heroes in various ways, and everyone has its own perspective on them. However, all the heroes share similarities as well as differences regardless of how real they would seem. By comparison, they commonly share heroic traits which contribute to having them go through a process known as a heroic journey. In contrary, they differ in their own goals ranging from saving the innocents from evil scientists or simply helping people lose weight, and fictional heroes tend to possess extraordinary power, unlike realistic heroes.

The heroic journey allows realistic

For example, Perseus, who lived as a son of Zeus and a princess Danae, serves its purpose of cutting a head of Medusa to offer it as a gift to Polydectes and he completes his goal by utilizing exceptional weapons from immortal gods. On the other hand, our historic sixteenth United States President from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, fulfilled his goal of preserving the Union by establishing one of his most remarkable strategy known as Emancipation Proclamation which made Union soldiers fight harder than ever to end slavery. As demonstrated, each hero had their own dissimilar purposes to pursue and accomplished their goals by Perseus borrowing the gods' superpowers whereas Abraham Lincoln simply using his advantage of wisdom and intelligence.

As shown above, realistic and fictional heroes show similarities as much as differences. They share their heroic traits and undergo the process of the heroic journey while they differ in their own goals and realistic heroes do not possess any superpower compared to fictional heroes. Yet no matter how literature portrays a hero - whether they use their intelligent brain or abnormal forces, every hero qualifies in every single way to become the role model of