Unusual circumstances often mark the birth of a mythic hero. The hero may be the result of a mixed union—Heracles was the son of the god Zeus (pronounced ZOOS) and of a mortal woman. Some heroes do not even need two parents. Kutoyis (pronounced koo-TOH-yis), a hero of the Native American Blackfoot people, was born as a clot of blood dropped by a buffalo. Karna, a hero of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, is born to a woman who is a virgin—a theme that occurs in many myths. The African Bantu people tell of Litulone, the child of an old woman who produced him without a man's help. Like Heracles, the Irish hero Cuchulain (pronounced koo-KUL-in), and many others, Litulone had great strength and fighting skill when barely out of infancy.
Legend of Sunjata, the female character Nana Triban tricks the evil king Sumanguru Kante into telling her the source of his great strength. Nana Triban uses this knowledge to help her brother Sunjata triumph over Sumanguru. In Greek mythology, Penelope (pronounced puh-NEL-uh-pee), the wife of Odysseus, outwits the many suitors pressing to marry her during her husband’s long absence. Claiming that she must weave a shroud for her father-in-law before she can remarry, she weaves by day and unravels the cloth by night. In the Persian tale One Thousand and One Nights, Sheherazade (pronounced shuh-HAIR-uh-zahd) prevents the sultan from carrying out a plan to kill her. Capturing his attention with fascinating stories, she withholds the endings, promising to continue the following evening.
Some culture heroes are tricksters—human or animal characters whose mischievous pranks and tricks can benefit humans. Raven and Coyote fill the trickster role in many American Indian myths. The Polynesians of the Pacific islands have myths about Maui (pronounced MOU-ee), a trickster whose actions have bad results as often as good ones. He loses immortality for humans, for example, but acquires fire for them. Tricksters in African myth are generally small and weak creatures, such as the hare and the spider, who outwit the strong, rich, and powerful. The African trickster hare is the distant ancestor of Brer Rabbit, a clever hero in African American mythology.
Folk Heroes Some heroes are ordinary individuals who have special skills. They may take up the causes of common people against tyrants and bullies or may be blessed with remarkable good fortune. Such heroes often become known through popular songs or folk tales, but they may also appear in various forms of literature.
Folk heroes include Robin Hood, an English adventurer who fought and robbed the rich in order to help the poor, and John Henry, an African American laborer who performed a humble job with exceptional—and fatal—strength and determination.
Defiant and Doomed Heroes The hero’s story does not always have a happy ending. Some heroes knowingly defy the limits placed on them by society or the gods. Even if they face destruction, they are determined to be true to their beliefs—or perhaps to perish in a blaze of glory. Others are simply the victims of their own failings or of bad luck.
Yamato-takeru (pronounced YAH-mah-toh-tah-kay-roo), a legendary warrior hero of Japan, brings about his own end when he kills two gods who have taken the form of a white deer and a white boar. Antigone (pronounced an-TIG-uh-nee), a Greek princess, defies the law in order to bury her brother, knowing that the penalty will be death. The most gruesomely doomed of all heroes may be Antigone’s father, Oedipus (pronounced ED-uh-puhs), who outrages the gods by unwittingly killing his father and marrying his mother. When he discovers what he has done, he gouges out his own eyes in shame. His heroism lies not in quests, adventures, or triumphs but in facing his tragic fate.
In Aztec myths, the culture hero Quetzalcoatl (pronounced keht-sahl-koh-AHT-l) was tricked by his enemy Tezcatlipoca (pronounced tehs-cah-tlee-POH-cah) into leaving his kingdom. After getting Quetzalcoatl drunk, Tezcatlipoca showed him a mirror with Tezcatlipoca’s frightening image. Believing that the mirror reflected his own face, Quetzalcoatl went away to purify himself, promising to return to his people at the end of a fifty-two-year cycle.
World History
