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Read the essay “Real Heroism is very hard to find” by William…
Read the essay “Real Heroism is very hard to find” by William Astore and answer the questions that
follow:
1. What is the thesis of the essay? (1 mark)
2. What are 3 arguments to support/prove his thesis? (3 marks)
3. Note 2 different persuasive techniques used by Astore and explain how he employs each of
these techniques? (4 marks)
4. What is the tone of this essay? (2 marks)
5. In several well-constructed paragraphs, answer the following question (using specific details
from Astore’s essay as well as your own. Include text-self/text/world connections):
Real heroism is very hard to find – From TheRecord.com
July 26, 2010
By William J. Astore
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I loved reading accounts of American bravery during the Second
World War.. And I was proud that my uncle had earned a Bronze Star for his service on
Guadalcanal. So it came as something of a shock when, in 1980, I first heard Yoda’s summary
of warriors and war in The Empire Strikes Back.
Luke Skywalker, if you remember, tells the wizened Jedi master that he seeks “a great warrior.”
“Wars not make one great,” Yoda replies.
I was struck by the truth of that statement even then, as I was preparing for a career in the
military. Certainly, military service (especially the life-and-death struggles of combat) can
provide an occasion for the exercise of heroism, but simply joining the armed services does not
make you a hero, nor does the act of serving in combat.
Still, ever since the events of 9/11, there’s been an almost religious veneration of U.S. service
members as “Our American Heroes” (as a well-intentioned sign puts it on the wall of my local
post office). But a snappy uniform or even dented body armor is not a magical shortcut to
hero status.
A hero is someone who behaves selflessly, usually at considerable personal risk and sacrifice, to
comfort or empower others and to make the world a better place. Heroes, of course, come in all
sizes, shapes, ages and colors, most of them looking nothing like John Wayne or John Rambo or
GI Joe (or Jane).
I come from a family of firefighters, yet our hero was my mother, a homemaker who raised five
kids and endured without complaint the ravages of cancer in the 1970s, with its then crude
chemotherapy regimen, its painful cobalt treatments and the collateral damage of loss of hair,
vitality and lucidity. In refusing to rail against her fate, she set an example of selfless courage
and heroism I shall never forget.
Whether in civilian life or in the military, heroes are rare indeed, all too rare. Heck, that’s the
reason we celebrate them. They’re the very best of us, which means they can’t be all of us.
But does elevating our troops to hero status really cause any harm? What’s wrong with praising
our troops to the rafters and adding them to our pantheon of heroes? A lot.
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By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of
war will be played down. In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is
guaranteed to degrade humanity as well.
“War,” as writer and cultural historian Louis Menand noted, “is specially terrible not because it
destroys human beings, who can be destroyed in plenty of other ways, but because it turns
human beings into destroyers.”
When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of destructive,
sometimes atrocious, behavior. Heroes, after all, don’t commit atrocities. They don’t, for
instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women’s bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes,
as the Times of London recently reported may have happened in Gardez, Afghanistan. Such
atrocities, so common to war’s brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many
Americans, who simply can’t imagine their “heroes” killing innocents and then covering up the
evidence. How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable,
even noble.
Even worse, seeing the military as universally heroic can serve to prolong wars. Consider, for
example, Germany during the First World War, a subject I’ve studied and written about. As the
historian Robert Weldon Whalen noted of those German soldiers of nearly a century ago: “The
young men in field-grey were, first of all, not just soldiers, but young heroes, Junge Helden.
They fought in the heroes’ zone, Heldenzone, and performed heroic deeds, Heldentaten.
Wounded, they shed hero’s blood, Heldenblut, and if they died, they suffered a hero’s death,
Heldentod, and were buried in a hero’s grave, Heldengrab.” The overuse of “Helden” as a
modifier to ennoble German militarism during the war undoubtedly prolonged the war, for how
could the government make peace with the villains who had killed these heroes? Wouldn’t their
deaths then have been in vain?
In rejecting blanket “hero” labels today, we would not be insulting our troops. Quite the
opposite: We’d be making common cause with them. Most of them already know the difference
between real heroism and everyday military service. Even the young “Helden” of Wilhelmine
Germany knew that service alone didn’t make them heroic. With the typical sardonic humor of
front-line soldiers, they preferred the less comforting but more descriptive label (given their
grim situation in the trenches) of “front pigs.”
Whatever nationality they may be, troops at the front know the score. Even as our media and our
culture seek to elevate them into the pantheon of demigods, the men and women at the front are
focused on doing their jobs and returning home with their bodies, their minds and their buddies
intact.
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So, next time you talk to our soldiers, sailors or airmen, do them (and your country) a small
favor. Thank them for their service. Let them know you appreciate them. Just don’t call them
heroes.
[William J. Astore, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of
Technology. (Los Angeles Times)]
