The Composite Hero

About a year and a half ago, I had the chance to read Steven Rosen's The Jedi in the Lotus, a book about the Hindu symbolism and themes of the Star Wars films. Rosen makes some interesting points in the book and the one I want to concentrate and expand upon in this post is the concept of the "composite hero." The term refers to a group of characters who each strongly exemplify a primary skill or personality trait needed to balance out the others in the group. The members of the group, on their own, are imbalanced or incomplete, but together, they form a unified whole or complete "hero."

The concept of the "composite hero" is a way to think about how narratives like this:

Can be compared to narratives like this:

Rosen, probably drawing on the work of famed Ramayana scholar Robert Goldman, notes that in the Indian epic the characters of Rama, his brother Lakshmana, his wife Sita, and his follower Hanuman (pictured above), all complement and complete one another. (For a quick synopsis of the Ramayana, read this link or, better yet, get this book!) Rama is the paradigmatic leader and king, Lakshmana represents brotherly loyalty, Hanuman stands for strength and devotion, and Sita is the exemplar of faithful womanhood. (Sita's portrayal has been seen as problematic and its cultural meaning is, at the least, debatable.)

Rosen compares the interactions of these characters in the epic to the main heroic ensemble of the original Star Wars. Each of those characters also embodies an archetypal ideal: the maverick mercenary (Han), the enthusiastic youth (Luke), the idealist (Leia), the tough guy (Chewie), the wise mentor (Obi-Wan), and the sidekicks (Threepio and Artoo). Each has his/her own strengths, but when they come together, they create something much stronger than the sum of the parts.

The novel Watership Down, which is one of my absolute favorites to have read with Xander, has much the same dynamic.

The book tells the story of a group of rabbits fleeing a disaster and trying to establish a new warren. For those who haven't read it, the book is remarkably erudite and is in many ways a version of the Aeneid, but for kids...and with rabbits. Hazel is a caring, natural leader, Bigwig is tough and resolute, Bluebell provides humor, Dandelion tells stories for the group, Fiver is a kind of prophet and seer, and so on. None of these rabbits would be able to make it as an individual, but by pooling their talents, they are able to survive and create a new home.

A currently popular mythic narrative speaks to the same sense of composite heroics.

As Nick Fury says in the first Avengers (2012): "There was an idea...called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more." Over the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that's exactly what they do: come together to be something greater than they could be on their own.

Certainly there is no shortage of narratives starring a lone hero who, using only his/her own talents and resourcefulness, accomplishes a goal or succeeds in a quest. Those stories emphasize our desire to feel unique and powerful as individuals. The narrative of the composite hero speaks to a different need: the need to feel like part of a team, as an accepted member of a community. Paradoxically, in these narratives, the characters only find out how talented they are as individulas by discovering how much they need other people. Their uniqueness emerges primarily when they work together with those who contribute very different things.

It may be a stretch, but I wonder if the narrative of the composite hero will become even more popular in times where we experience more and more social alienation. Going back to our roots as a species, we most likely lived in small groups of hunter-gatherers who all contributed, each in their own way, to the survival of the community. In a vastly more aggregated, industrialized society, it can be difficult to see how one's contributions help the greater whole or how one truly stands out in a teeming, faceless crowd. 

We all want to know that we matter and that we have something to offer. The myth of the composite hero offers a very basic, human truth about how to discover what that is: we truly find ourselves in our relationships to other people.

That's all for now. Until the next time, take care.