The Hero Overcomes His One Failing

l he Hero Overcomes His One Failing
THE HERO who is hampered by a crippling delusion is not
aware of the cause of his trouble or, occasionally, even of
the fact that he has trouble. Once a man becomes conscious
of his delusion, by definition he is free of it. We have seen
in Chapter 5 how the false belief is the subject of a frequently
used type of slick story. There is another, lesser
used plot which, in many ways, parallels the delusion story.
It concerns a hero who has a problem of a psychological
nature, but a problem of which he is conscious.
A partner in a small air-freight company witnesses the
death of one of his young pilots in a plane crash. The hero,
after this experience, decides to give up flying. He quits his
company and takes an administrative job with a large substantial
airline. Most of his friends are pilots with whom he
flew in World War II. Flying is their whole life, and now
that one of their buddies has quit the air, they become contemptuous
of him. They think him a coward. The hero is
deeply hurt by these cuts, especially from his ex-partner who
continues to run the air-freight company alone. Nonetheless,
he has decided that flying is a needlessly risky business.
In his administrative position with the large airline, word
comes to him one day that this ex-partner has crash-landed on
a mountain side which lies along the freight run he had made
so many times when flying for his old company. The papers
and news broadcasters give the partner up for lost. They
maintain that no foot party could possibly reach him in time
and that no plane could land on the mountain. It is not
known whether the downed pilot is still alive, but Army
planes are dropping supplies near the wreck in the hope that
the pilot may be able to make use of them.
Despite the fact that the hero suffered some of the severest
indignities at the hands of his ex-partner, he decides to take
a helicopter and try to make a landing on a shelf on the mountain
side which he recalls having observed many times when
making the run. Naturally, he manages the landing and
rescues his partner. He has proved to himself and his friends
that he has overcome his fear of flying, but nonetheless he
returns to his desk job with the big airline, more certain than
ever that flying is a thankless business.
The classic story in this vein is boringly familiar. It concerns
the young man who, either because of a traumatic
experience or some innate fear, finds himself unable to perform
his duty-be it soldiering in battle, riding a bucking
bronco, boxing with a killer fighter, or performing a dangerous
circus act. But, in the clutch, the fellow outdoes
himself. Of course, he hardly manages the thing spontaneously.
Some extraordinary stimulus for overcoming his
fear must be presented to him-in the above story, a desire
to save the life of a friend.
In its pure form, the story is not apt to be salable to the
slicks. It has been done to death by the movies, by the
slicks themselves, and most of the other media of popular
fictional entertainment. To sell this kind of story there
must be some strong, original content-a cop who has
become afraid of handling a gun, a paratrooper afraid of
jumping, a pathologist afraid of germs. Or else, there must
be a switch in the story structure, as with the ex-pilot who
after making the one flight necessary to prove he is not a
coward then re-retires from the game.
An interesting reversal on the theme appeared recently.
A harbor fireman has just been promoted to the rank of
lieutenant. About this time, his chief recognizes that our hero
is taking too many unnecessary chances in doing his job. The
firemen under the lieutenant are coming to distrust his judgment
and leadership ability.
The main dramatic incident of the story concerns an immense
harbor fire. At it, the hero-lieutenant improvidently
puts himself into an extremely dangerous position. His men
who feel that the lieutenant is grandstanding do not follow
him-except one fireman who, unknown to the lieutenant,
has gone aboard the blazing vessel behind the lieutenant. The
hero is overcome by smoke and is saved only by his faithful
assistant. But before he passes out, the lieutenant realizes
that the reason he has been taking such extraordinary chances
is that the fear of fires had been growing steadily in him ever
since a close call he had had some time back; and to ward off
the fear, to prove to himself that he was not a coward, he had
turned himself into an impractical daredevil. The rescuing
fireman, having seen the fear on the lieutenant's face just
before he passed out, realizes this too. After the rescue, of
course, the lieutenant becomes a good fireman once again.
The mechanics of the fear that attends a hazardous occupation
are peculiar and not much in line with the usual
opinions about them. Most paratroopers in training will
tell you that the fear of jumping increases and does not
diminish with the number of jumps made, and usually has
nothing to do with any particular traumatic experience.
Combat flight personnel during World War II discovered
the same kind of progressively incapacitating fear of combat
missions for which there was no cure beside cessation
of the dangerous activity.
The one-close-shave kind of thing remains, though, the
most acceptable explanation of a debilitating mental block.
And the resumption of the activity under stress remains
the most acceptable release from that block.
By no means is the "one failing" limited to fears of
dangers. The problem can be, to use the pretentious
phrase, any emotional wound caused by some unpleasant
occurrence, association, or situation. Under the love plots,
we've come across men and women who were incapable
of or unwilling to fall in love because of some past unfortunate
amatorial adventure. The young man who has been
hidden in the shadow of a dominant elder brother or father
is familiar. The feeling of inadequacy in some respect is
often the consciously recognized failing of the hero. It can
be alcoholism, an impulsion to revenge; on a comic level,
stuttering, obesity, shyness, and so on.
But whatever the failing, the success of the story depends
on the dramatic potential of the resolution.
category:plot lines
Category: transformation.