Adventure Question #3 - Heroes
May. 29th, 2006 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosWho were your childhood adventure heroes? What did you admire (or envy) most about them?
Two names leap to mind and overshadow everyone else: Dorothy Gale and Princess Leia.
Dorothy was an ordinary girl in an ordinary place who was whisked away into a fairy land and had lots of adventures.
Thinking about it now, Dorothy wasn't 'heroic' in the conventional sense. She wasn't a warrior. Her quest was to get home. She succeeded not because she was especially brave, but because of her homely, basic virtues (pluck, kindness, persistence) and the love and loyalty she inspired in others.
What I envied about her was that she got off the farm, and eventually she became a princess in fairyland, still having adventures but living in a castle in the Emerald City when not out on the road with her companions.
Looking back now, I think that the other thing I envied about her was that she didn't have to initiate her adventure herself. The tornado (and later the storm, the magical road, or etc.) did that for her. Once she was in the adventure, she did the best she could. It was only late in the series that she struck out on adventures herself.
When I started writing my own adventure story, making myself the main character, I did the same thing: having an outside force propel me into adventure.
Princess Leia was brave. That's what entranced me about her from the first. The woman never betrayed any fear except when faced with the destruction of her planet. She never lost her nerve, was never at a loss for words, never feared what anyone else might think or do to her. Luke and Han might have been swept up in events, but she had chosen to be there, she was making things happen. Watching her that first time (at age 12) was like having a lightning bolt hit my psyche.
I still fall far short of her courage, determination, and initiative.
The third person was Richard Halliburton, author of The Complete Book of Marvels and other tales of real-life adventures. Halliburton traveled all over the world doing things like throwing himself into sacrificial wells in South America, swimming through the Panama Canal, flying a biplane through the Middle East, spending the night on the grounds of the Taj Mahal, and etc. And then he wrote about his experiences in an engaging manner designed to inspire kids to see all these wonderful things themselves -- or at least to study and learn more about them. (He also wrote about the history, myths, and legends of these incredible places, so young readers understood what was special about them beyond his specific adventure there.) This was a man who embraced adventure and wanted to bring everyone else along for the ride.
Two names leap to mind and overshadow everyone else: Dorothy Gale and Princess Leia.
Dorothy was an ordinary girl in an ordinary place who was whisked away into a fairy land and had lots of adventures.
Thinking about it now, Dorothy wasn't 'heroic' in the conventional sense. She wasn't a warrior. Her quest was to get home. She succeeded not because she was especially brave, but because of her homely, basic virtues (pluck, kindness, persistence) and the love and loyalty she inspired in others.
What I envied about her was that she got off the farm, and eventually she became a princess in fairyland, still having adventures but living in a castle in the Emerald City when not out on the road with her companions.
Looking back now, I think that the other thing I envied about her was that she didn't have to initiate her adventure herself. The tornado (and later the storm, the magical road, or etc.) did that for her. Once she was in the adventure, she did the best she could. It was only late in the series that she struck out on adventures herself.
When I started writing my own adventure story, making myself the main character, I did the same thing: having an outside force propel me into adventure.
Princess Leia was brave. That's what entranced me about her from the first. The woman never betrayed any fear except when faced with the destruction of her planet. She never lost her nerve, was never at a loss for words, never feared what anyone else might think or do to her. Luke and Han might have been swept up in events, but she had chosen to be there, she was making things happen. Watching her that first time (at age 12) was like having a lightning bolt hit my psyche.
I still fall far short of her courage, determination, and initiative.
The third person was Richard Halliburton, author of The Complete Book of Marvels and other tales of real-life adventures. Halliburton traveled all over the world doing things like throwing himself into sacrificial wells in South America, swimming through the Panama Canal, flying a biplane through the Middle East, spending the night on the grounds of the Taj Mahal, and etc. And then he wrote about his experiences in an engaging manner designed to inspire kids to see all these wonderful things themselves -- or at least to study and learn more about them. (He also wrote about the history, myths, and legends of these incredible places, so young readers understood what was special about them beyond his specific adventure there.) This was a man who embraced adventure and wanted to bring everyone else along for the ride.
