Introduction
The fictional tales in world literature resources are found abundant in tales of various war heroes and heroines. Most of the renowned heroes appeared as protagonist of the fictional tales and mythologies, like Hercules, Achilles, Hector, etc. However, they all were at some point of adolescence as per the maturity patterns dominant in their era and their judgment was often flawed that led them to dangers and a subsequent creation of highly chivalrous tales.
On the contrary there were some other scenarios of an aristocratic display of heroism, where the heroes were found to attain a certain maturity level, as per their era’s aging patterns. A notable list of such heroes involves King Priam of Troy and Aerin of Damar. In this essay, we will be considering various instances from the life of these war heroes to evaluate the impact of maturity over their aristocratic heroism.
Analyzing Priam and Aerin’s life incidents to ratify role of maturity in their heroism
In his quest to save the city of Troy, King Priam acknowledged the fact that for saving his city from the wrath of Achilles, he had to sacrifice his son Hector. Even after having a strong intuition for the imminent decimation of his city, he agreed to let Hector individually combat with Achilles. Achilles not only killed Hector but also abused and dishonoured his corpse, as a gesture of expressing his fury (Winkler 2). Priam then lamented not only for his son’s death but also over death of many other sons in the war. He also accepted that his biasness towards a wrong deed of his son Paris (abducting Helen) will now cost him the future of his city and also his son’s life.
This heroic decision taken by Priam, sacrificing his son over his people is different from that of King Agamenon who led the entire cluster of Greek armies in Trojan War (Malouf 6). Where on one hand we can see how Priam grieved over loss of lives in the Trojan War, Agamenon was later accused for bringing in all of the Greek armies for the Trojan War and subsequently, alleged for deaths of many young people during the war. Thus Priam’s maturity got his heroic decision augmented towards saving innocent trojan people.
Considering another incident when, Achilles was so furious over Hector’s assassination of his nephew that he dragged his dead body over the city shores and denied handing it over to Trojan people for funeral. Priam disguised himself as a commoner to meet Achilles secretly and in their meeting, he reminded Achilles of his father, causing him to weep and finally allowed to take Hector’s corpse back to Troy.
The contemporary kings in those mythic Greek eras were stuffed with extreme egoism and when never moved by emotional gravamen to plead before their enemies. Priam broke this conventional pattern and risked his security to approach Achilles, as a father and not as a King. Consequently, he gained over the body of his son which otherwise was almost an impossible task (Malouf 6). This example also shows the impact of maturity and consequent wisdom in shaping his unconventional heroism.
The following two incidents, taken from different stages in Aerin’s life, illustrate the differences between her heroism from the conventional war heroes:
During her recovery span from the ill effects of poisonous plant, she engrossed herself over developing the secret solution of a fireproof ointment, the Kennet (Keeling 14). After repetitive attempts for three years, she finally succeeded in preparing the kenet, which later aided in her quest of slaying the remnant dragons in the Damarian kingdom.
Aerin’s act of slaying the dragon by using her own invented fireproof ointment, during the course of her recovery (from poisoning) is an unconventional example of heroism (Keeling 15). We can compare Aerin to Queen Andromeda, another war aristocratic hero, who was a great queen cum warrior and she gained all her traits from other skilled warriors and not from her own efforts. So Aerin’s isolation from the royal privileges, when compared to that of other royal members, gave her the exceptional matured decision making.
During the later span of the tale, when her father King Arlebeth was forced to face his enemies in the north and simultaneous occurrence of the giant dragon Maur over the Damar city, Aerin took the charge for killing the dragon herself, in spite of the fact that her fireproof ointment was futile to stand against the mighty scorch of Maur. Although she got badly injured during her struggle to kill Maur, she managed to kill the dragon successfully.
When all the earlier heroic acts of war aristocracy involve use of command and conquer strategy executed over armies (say in case of Andromeda), Aerin’s individual stand shows her matured judgement sense to avoid any unprotected people (without fireproofing ability)from facing the lethal dragon. Hence, this maturity in decision making stands apart as an unconventional heroic act.
Analyzing Priam and Aerin’s impact over redefining their inhibiting structures
Priam’s decision of sacrificing his son’s life (being a king from Greek culture) shows a lack of violent intransigence in his decisive ability as a ruler; rather he was always using his judgment mercifully and towards his quest for saving innocent Trojan people from dying.The Greek aristocratic warriors were generally intransigent and their rulers were extremely hedonistic in treating their people as their right. (Malouf 6). However, Priam redefined the generic ruler’s stance to be more towards his people’s safety, even ahead of his own family.
In spite of Achilles’ act of physically abusing and dishonouring Hector, Priam risked his safety to furtively sneak into Achilles camp and plead for a proper ceremonial funeral right of his son. Achilles was swayed by his fatherly sentiments and he let him and Hector’s body to be sent back safely to Troy.The most known war aristocratic heroes (like Hercules) were mostly blessed with valour to fight, to spill bloods of enemies and to even risk their life, but were never emotionally driven to be apologetic or obsequious. Priam’s gesture of pleading for is son has redefined this obstinate stance dominant in the inhibiting structure.
Similarly, Aerin’s decision to sacrifice her life by accepting the royalty test of eating poisonous Surka plant leaves, which was bargained for denying the public accusation of witchcraft , over her mother . She sustained the impact of consuming the poisonous leaves but fell seriously ill (Keeling 13).Aerin’s judgment of proving her lineage’s credibility by risking her life to utmost fatality is a brilliant heroic act, because that was the only option left to ratify her true lineage to royal family (Keeling 13). These acts of self sacrifice in pursuit of clinching her own identity is again an iconic redefinition of social structure in which she was, when compared to other heroes in similar strata like Hercules and Achilles.
During her war with the giant dragon, Maur, Aerin was badly injured and was not able to recover well, still when guided by a vision, she stood up for her quest against the desired existence and met Luthe, who later guided her in killing Agsded and attained the Hero’s crown (Keeling 14).Waging a war in bad health due to injuries after winning one war, and winning that too!! This exceptional act of heroism, displays Aerin’s decisive ability to redefine the prevalent structure for roles of female heirs to the kings, when compared to that of Queen Andromeda and Agamenon.
Conclusion
We have garnered enough evidence from the lives of the two chosen unconventional war heroes and tried to prove that the rationality of their decisions and consequent act of heroism were significantly impacted by their maturity in age. In comparison to acts of other heroes, who brought more danger to themselves and others by taking reflexive decisions, the stance of grave decisive ability (in matured decisions of Priam and Aerin) is clearly evident and ratified.
Works Cited
Keeling, K.K and Sprague, M.M. “Dragon-Slayer vs. Dragon-Sayer: Reimagining the Female Fantasy Heroine”. The Alan Review. 2009 : 13-17. Print.
Malouf, D. “Ransom: Insight text guide”. Insight publications. 2009 : 3-10.Print.
Winkler, M. “Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic”. Blackwell Publishing. Oxford 2007.Print.
