Pilgrimage Ponderings
How Do We Choose Our Heroes?
This afternoon I had the privilege and good fortune to hear my former American Literature professor speak to a book club in my community. The topic was J.D. Salinger, with particular reference to the short story, "To Esme--With Love and Squalor" and the novel The Catcher in the Rye. As he reviewed for us the path of this novel from banned book to classic and required reading, he shared some of the reviews that have been published over the last 40 or so years.
One quote that really spoke to me was a comment from a reviewer about why the troubled teen character Holden Caulfield has become such an important figure in modern American literature. Teenagers, the reviewer said, have made Holden a hero, not so much because they admire him, but because they recognize him. My teacher said that when he reads this review to his honors students, they all nod their heads in understanding.
So I've been thinking about heroes, and why we have them and why we choose them. I wonder about the people that are lifted up in People magazine and in the movies. Do we admire them or is it simply that we recognize them as similar to people we know? I think of beautiful young women who seem to "have it all" including fame, riches, talent, and beauty--until if becomes apparent that most of that image is very different from the empty, searching self beneath all the glamor. Could it be that they remind us of our own divided selves?
And then I think about people whom I admire, like Mother Teresa, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. I admire them because they remind me of the kind of people I think Jesus would like us to be. But they are also pretty safe heroes, because they are so out-of-the ordinary. I doubt that I could ever really be like them. So I am wondering what it would be like to claim Jesus as a "hero," not only because we admire him, but because we can recognize him in our world as well.
