What Makes a Hero? My Archetype Analysis

I have issues with heroes. Generally, I tolerate them. Sometimes I like them. Sometimes I hate them so passionately I start actively rooting for the bad guy, no matter how evil they are. But very rarely do I love them.

​Yet I find myself drawn to stories about heroes. I like high fantasy, I like stories about good and evil. I want there to be dramatic, end-of-the-world stakes. I like my stories with a hero in them, I just never like the hero I’m given.

So, a few nights ago, after watching Avengers: Endgame, I was thinking about how Marvel has ten thousand heroes, and yet my favorite characters, are, unsurprisingly, Loki and Bucky. (I’m on the verge of liking Nebula, if they’d only give her a little more character development.) I like most of the heroes just fine, but I’m not always invested in their stories.

I began to wonder why I had so much trouble with heroes.

And then I thought about butterflies.

I used to hate butterflies. I’d dodge whenever one tried to touch me. I shuddered to see one. My family always thought I was afraid of them, but it wasn’t fear, so much as a deep disgust. You’d think I’d want them dead, but no, just the opposite. I hated dead butterflies worse than live ones, and I’d always spot the dead ones, a single wing lying on the ground.

I remember learning, as a kid, that a butterfly’s taste buds were on their toes and if they landed on you and you pulled your finger down too hard, their toes would rip off. I learned if you touched their wings, you’d rub off their scales and they couldn’t fly. I saw a nature documentary about a rainforest with a bird catching a blue morpho butterfly; the narrator explained that the bird had to rip off the wings before they ate them alive, and I covered my eyes. I remember going through a monarch migration and seeing butterflies smash the car window. I think I screamed.

​I hated butterflies because they were fragile. Because they died.

I didn’t really hate them.

I hated seeing them get hurt.

And this logic translated to heroes. Maybe I didn’t hate heroes, per say. Maybe I loved them. Maybe what I hated was seeing them mistreated, misused, even mislabeled.

So I thought about what heroes I really, really loved and connected to. My idea was to first, figure out what made a good hero using my own personal examples, and then to figure out why I hated the current platter of heroes being served to us.

The results surprised me. As it turns out, I have ridiculously high standards.

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