Some Varieties of Heroes in AmericaAuthor(s): Roger D. AbrahamsReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Folklore Institute, Vol. 3, No. 3, [Special Issue: The Yugoslav-AmericanFolklore Seminar] (Dec., 1966), pp. 341-362Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3813806 .Accessed: 27/04/2012 23:37

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ROGER D. ABRAHAMS

Some Varieties of Heroes in America

The deeds of heroes are sung throughout the world, but the concept of heroic action is by no means universal.1 The actions we consider heroic reflect a view of life which is based upon contest values and a social hierarchy built on the model of a male-centered family. A hero is a man whose deeds epitomize the masculine attributes most highly valued within such a society. Because there are various masculine traits which one group or another has found attractive, there are different kinds of heroes. Heroism is the attainment of public acclaim by specific figures (whether real or mythic or fictional) whose actions are seen as note- worthy and good, and in most cases, worthy of emulation. Legendary heroes arise because values guiding action exist within a specific group and individuals appear or are imagined who act in line with these values to a

superlative degree. Heroes become celebrated and sung because their actions so fully embody these masculine values. More important for the

present discussion, hero stories are a depiction, a projection of values in story form.

As projections, these stories reflect the values of the culture in two

ways: as a guide for future action in real life and as an expression of dream-life, of wish-fulfillment. The two motives generally function simultaneously, except in a society in which heroic action is impossible.

However, there are certain types of heroes in which one motive obviously predominates. For instance, in many groups there is a trickster

See, for instance, Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression (Cleveland and New York, 1951), p. 36: "In Western society, heroism is of high value. Beginning with Homer, there is a long series of sagas about heroic exploits. One would gather from these that heroism is a universal value. Is it not. In a culture like Alor, there are no heroes: the chief protagonist ... is anything but heroic. He is generally an insignificant nobody, whose fate is not decided by courageous and enterprising exploits but by women and the father-in-law to be."

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hero who expends much of his energy in anti-social or anti-authoritarian activity. Even when this results in benefits to the group, his actions can not be interpreted as providing a model for future conduct. He is a projection of desires generally thwarted by society. His celebrated deeds function as an approved steam-valve for the group; he is allowed to perform in this basically childish way so that the group may vicariously live his adventures without actually acting on his impulses. To encourage such action would be to place the existence of the group in jeopardy. On the other hand, the contest hero in a group which is constantly at war obviously provides a model for emulation. This does not deny that such a hero also has a dream dimension, but his normative function predominates.

This ambience is further complicated by the relation of the narrator to the hero story. Traditionally, in many societies which exalt heroic action, the role of the storyteller commands great respect. The effective use of words is widely regarded as an exhibition of strength and manliness in itself. Furthermore, by telling hero stories the narrator identifies himself strongly with the hero and his deeds in the eyes of the audience; part of his power is achieved vicariously.2

The complex operation of the telling of a hero story in a group in which heroic values exist may be outlined as follows; the performer tells his story:

1. to increase his own prestige and sense of masculinity; 2. to give his audience a plan of action which is viable in present and

recurring situations; 3. to provide the male audience with a sense of its own manly deeds in

the past, giving the members self-confidence in the present; 4. to provide for future success by retelling past success, calling into

play the principle of sympathetic magic; 5. to provide a fulfillment of manliness by vicarious association of

both teller and audience with the hero and his actions. This last has always been of some importance in the retelling of a story, though it has seldom been noticed by scholars of the so-called "Heroic Age."

The question remains, how much did this vicarious motive enter into

2 This is a complicated phenomenon and can not be fully outlined here. For a more extended argument, plus a review of some of the scholarship, see my book, Deep Down in the Jungle..., (Hatboro, Pa., 1964), Chapter 3, "The Man of Words."

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such tellings? It is impossible with our present data to fully assess this. We can tell, however, that in many groups, as life has become more urban and sedentary, that constant war and the resultant contest values have been transferred to other activities or otherwise have died. But, as in all aspects of culture, forms persist while functions change. The hero stories have remained tremendously popular, but they fulfill a different purpose. The normative aspects of the stories have become less operational; the vicarious aspects have assumed increasingly greater importance.

A developmental pattern is discernable concerning heroic fictions and heroes in a group in which heroic action becomes less the norm in real life. When an heroic culture exists and disappears, heroic fictions and the attitude toward heroic action seem to go through a graduated three-part development:

1. Heroic stories in a warlike age where heroic values are operative. In such times, there is genuine regard for an antagonist, as well as hatred for him. He, too, has heroic virtues, and the battle is an heroic one. The hero and the group he represents are indissoluble.

2. The collapse of the possibility of heroic action in most aspects of life, resulting in the exaggeration of heroism and manliness in heroic fictions. The hero's masculinity is precarious, incapable of being per- manently proven. He is always ready for a fight. He fights for himself; his connections with a group are tenuous. He is a superman in every way, often in relations with women (though women are sometimes rejected as unmanly). There is a complete loss of regard for the antagonist who is defeated, because he is either unmasculine or an emasculator, or both. He becomes less and less manly as the hero becomes more so.

3. The detumescence and decay of the hero. The protagonist is forced to assume a passive pose. He may do so as an aggression, in which case his passivity becomes a masochistic pose by which he is able ultimately to get the better of the antagonist (often through a joke rather than through action). Or, he may resign his masculinity in favor of a clown's role, in self-defeating acts, or in virtual suicide.3

This is a schematic outline and needs a great deal of modification and elaboration for it to become meaningful. It is undoubtedly more useful in relation to the fictions of some groups than others. It is not

3 The basis of this trichotomy comes from my discussions with my colleague Dr. Americo Paredes. He has developed his ideas in relation to Mexican folklore in an as-yet-unpublished paper, "The Anglo-American in Mexican Folklore."

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irreversable; there are many situations in which, because of some histori- cal occurrence such as revolutionary or civil war or the establishment of pioneer communities, heroic values again become totally operative.

In this article I will look into some representative hero stories in three American groups: (1) the Negro, in which certain truly heroic elements exist and are reflected in his stories; (2) white rural folk communities, in which the hero is often portrayed as being totally defeated; and (3) urban popular culture, in which a progressively exaggerated heroism can be discerned.

The Negro in the United States, because of historical and familial differences, has a folklore of a very different dimension and character than that of any other group in the country. His lore displays an attitude toward heroism and independent action which exhibits many aspects of the first stage of the developmental pattern, though certain aspects of the second stage as well. The male tradition-bearers among the

Negroes, the men of words among the lower class, exist in an atmosphere in which they are involved in constant contest situations which often almost verge on war, and thus their values are often heroic. However, they seldom get a chance to fight their real enemy openly, and conse- quently their heroism (both physically and fictionally expressed) often is misdirected, self-defeating, and only temporarily effective in dispelling fears of the loss of masculinity. Their expressions of manliness are therefore often exaggerated.

Basically the Negro man of the lower class is an emasculated male in search of his masculine identity, a virtually futile occupation. He is born into a matrifocal family and community, one in which mother or grandmother is the center of authority as well as affection. There is seldom a man around on whom he can pattern his personality develop- ment. He is loved as a child, but despised as a man, for in this group the women do not trust the men and vice versa. Consequently, when the boy enters adolescence and begins to search for his male identity, he is either frustrated by his mother and forced to conform to her values, or he is rejected. This system was founded during slavery and has been perpetuat- ed by the white community which has found that it is easier to deal with

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the Negro if the women are kept in the ascendant position, while the men are kept emotionally and economically deprived. Thus the situation continues to exist whereby the women find it easy to obtain employ- ment or to find some other method by which they can exist without economic support from a man. The Negro boy is forced out onto the streets and into a gang.4

In the gang, the youth is presented with his first viable image of masculinity: the hard-man, the bully, the gang leader. This man lives by his strength and audacity in the midst of a totally antagonistic world. He is a leader because he is the most stylish and daring of the group, and often the strongest as well. His precarious sense of self is reflected in a feeling of personal honor that is rooted in a territory, not out of loyalty but convenience. Like a hero of an "Heroic Age" he represents that area and the group that lives in it, but unlike the classic hero he does not act for the group, but only for himself. His vision is not wide enough to think in terms of anything larger than self-interest. But generally, he is not able to fight his true enemies, the whites who have boxed him in both physically and emotionally, or his mother who has created an unseverable bond through her rearing practices, yet rejecting him and his masculinity. He channels his aggression against others like himself, other bullies. He can never firmly prove himself as long as this deflection occurs. He must constantly test himself in these minor ways to provide some kind of support for his self-confidence, though such efforts are all too often self-defeating. His internal conflicts are so great that he searches for ways of proving himself that also result in his own destruction. Thus he constructs the image of the heroic hard-man who lives in strength and who dies in style. Because of this, he himself often winds up dead or in jail. This is the hero of the gangs, and this is the Negro hero as he is portrayed in recent Negro traditional narratives.

But this hero is openly rebelling as a man against the emasculating factors in his life. In the past, the Negro has not even had this misdirected heroism available to him. In slavery and post-slavery days the Negro could not be as overt in his aggressions. In order to express his aggressive desires in his stories, he had to assume a childish role, for children's aggressions are harmless, powerless. The Negro cast himself as a somewhat malicious but clever animal trickster in the "Br'er Rabbit" 4 For a fuller description of this situation with regard to one neighborhood of Negro youths, see Deep Down in the Jungle..., Ch. 1.

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stories, or as an apparently stupid, faithful slave "John" who managed slyly to outwit (but not defeat) "Marster." In both types of stories the subservient or small hero managed to outmaneuver those more powerful than he, but the victories were always short-term and never endowed the trickster hero with a rise in status or provided him with a transforming experience. The trickster never grew beyond childhood, in any real sense. These pre-heroic roles are probably a real reflection of a modal personality of the slave Negro who had learned to get along, and whose only approved manner of expressing himself aggressively was by giving the impression of inefficacy and childishness. These stories did provide the slave with a workable pattern of aggressive action, even if it was hardly heroic.5

Though these stories are still part of the repertoire of older Negro storytellers, they are becoming less and less apparent. Much more in vogue are the more overtly aggressive hard-man heroes. The earliest indications of this hero type are in a group of songs which seem to have arisen late in the nineteenth and early in the twentieth centuries. In these, the doings of hard-men are celebrated in songs about "Railroad Bill," "Stackolee," "John Henry," "The Bully of the Town," and many others. These songs are concerned with well-known legendary characters and seldom tell their story so much as celebrate their style of life. They sing of the hero as if his story were known to everyone. Railroad Bill, for instance, is remembered as much for his trait of lighting cigars with a ten-dollar bill as for his murderous exploits. Most who sing of John Henry take note of his numerous women and deal with his exploits with a hammer only in passing.

John Henry is undoubtedly the most ubiquitous and interesting of the hard-man legendary heroes, and the one most acceptable to middle-class white audiences because he channeled his aggressions into his actions with a hammer rather than in thieving or in killing.6 It is interesting to note that his life story is close to that of the biographical pattern of the hero of other ages.7 He has an unusual birth and springs to life nearly full-grown, with a sense of doom surrounding his very existence, knowing

5 For a more extended description of the changing types of Negro heroes, see Deep Down in the Jungle..., Ch. 2. 6 For his treatment in the hands of popular writers, see Richard M. Dorson, "The Career of 'John Henry'," Western Folklore, XXIV (1965), 155-163. 7 Many have taken note of this biographical pattern of heroes. For a recent resume of this scholarship, see Archer Taylor, "The Biographical Pattern in Traditional Narrative," Journal of the Folklore Institute, I (1964), 114-129.

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that the hammer is going to result in his death. After the singing of his immense prowess with the hammer and with women, his life comes to a crisis quickly in the confrontation with the steamdrill, the impersonal weapon of the enemy that would rob him of his job, his power, and his virility. He is successful in the epic battle with the machine, but he dies in the throes of victory. However, his death is triumphant, for when he is buried, all who pass his grave sing his praise, "There lies a steel-driving man."

John Henry is the only one of these hard-man heroes who does not channel his actions into anti-societal patterns of behavior. Most of the heroes of these legendary songs are murderers and thieves, sadistic in their motivation, badmen looking for a fight just to prove their own strength and virility. This kind of hero is still prevalent in Negro lore, especially that of the youths of the big cities. But now the heroes' deeds are recited rather than sung. An active tradition of streetcorner epic exists today wherever these youths congregate, in poolhalls, bars, prisons. Long poems, often called 'toasts' by their bardic improvisers, are recited about the clash of 'Stackolee' and 'Billy Lion' or the elephant and the lion.8 The trickster is also still found in these poems, but he is as mean and malicious as his badman counterpart, as in the toast of "The Signifying Monkey and the Lion," in which the tricky monkey persuades lion to fight an elephant, knowing that lion will be badly beaten.

In most of these poems and songs, the hero's battles end triumphantly for him, even when he brutally murders innocent bystanders. He often dies, but always in style. Sometimes he goes to Hell and beats the Devil at his own game, thus perpetuating his earthly struggles. However, his victories are never really transforming ones. He is an adolescent hero who manages to win many battles, but never the war, in attempting to secure his own male identity, for he seldom knows whom he is fighting or why. His confused struggle reflects that of the men who tell his exploits; it also reflects the virtually insoluble problems confronting these men in their day-to-day existence.

II

The badman hero is one type that is shared by all three of the groups discussed here. A natural outgrowth of the Negro's stories in which 8 For representative texts, plus an examination of bardic techniques, see Deep Down in the Jungle..., Ch. 4.

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badmen are heroes is that the notorious criminals of the outside world were of great interest to them, and Jesse James and his gang, "Baby-Face" Nelson, and John Dillinger all are to be found in one toast. These same criminals have found a place in American popular literature as well as some notoriety in the folklore of white rural communities. But these last groups have added certain important attributes to the stories of these criminals. Mody C. Boatright, drawing material from oral biographies of the James brothers, Billy the Kid, and other range outlaws, has pointed out that there is a certain pattern to the recounted lives of these men. They all belong to the Anglo-American majority and come from respect- able but not wealthy families, have an unfortunate childhood, commit their first crimes under extreme provocation, fight the enemies of their people, perform acts of tenderness, and atone for their misdeeds, generally in heroic deaths.9

This kind of hero differs considerably from the rebellious image given the same historical character in the popular imagination. These heroes are attached to a region or a cause, provoked into action by external pressure and not internal psychic need, and even when forced into a life of "crime," retain their essential virtue. This attachment to an area and a cause emphasizes their role as a leader of men; most of the folk badman heroes do command an outlaw band who serve as an avenging army for the region.

John 0. West has shown that such a comitatus pattern is not only found in the heroes of the Anglo-American frontier in the United States, but also in such "good" outlaws as Gregorio Cortez and Joaquin Murieta. The attributes of these heroes which West notes are: (1) their championing of a partisan group of which they are a part; (2) their manliness, providing a vital force in the midst of social upheaval; (3) their fighting the under- dog's battle, but fighting it well; and for this, (4) getting killed, often treacherously.10

The most popular expressions of the deeds of these badmen are found in ballads, for these songs achieved a provenience far wider than the

9 Mody C. Boatright, "The Western Bad Man as Hero," Mesquite and Willow (== Publication of the Texas Folklore Society, XXVII) (Dallas, 1957), 96-104. 10 John 0. West, "To Die Like a Man: The 'Good' Outlaw Tradition in the American Southwest," unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, The University of Texas, 1964. He studies, in addition to Murieta and Cortez, Billy the Kid and Jesse James. He also shows that many of these specific heroic attributes were given to other, lesser known badmen.

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legendary tales which tended to be quite local. The ballad and other types of story songs seem to be the major narrative expression of rural white America, judging by materials collected from tradition-oriented communities. The attribute most emphasized in songs of outlaws is the manner in which these criminals effectively carry out their dangerous jobs. This concern is found throughout most of the songs encountered in this Anglo-American country tradition in which heroic action of any sort is portrayed.

The most widespread of such songs are the ones concerned with more legitimate male occupations. It would seem that when men get together to do a job, their values tend to become progressively more heroic. The ballads of occupational groups such as lumberjacks, cowboys, and railroaders tell stories in which a man emerges as a representative of the group and performs a difficult occupational detail valiantly, exhibiting strength and bravery, living a brief hero's life before dying an heroic death. Thus Young Monroe, in the most widely sung lumberjack song, "The Jam on Gerry's Rocks," steps bravely forward and breaks up a log jam, losing his life in the process. Many other ballads from the lumber camps celebrate similar feats. In the same way, cowboys recount the doings of many like "Little Joe, the Wrangler," who die while stopping a stampede or some other dangerous activity involved in the cattle trade. Such heroism is also evinced in songs of the railroad engineers who attempted to bring their engines 'in on time' and had wrecks in doing so.

In all these and in the songs of other occupational groups, one man emerges from the group and becomes a temporary leader. But this is a shadow comitatus, for the hero does dedicate his life to the group, but the group never becomes identified with his name, and his men do not follow him. They just stand there admiring him while he dies. We cannot overlook the basically suicidal motivation here, for often the designated one knows he is going to his death and does so gladly, desiring his heroic end. In an explicit statement of these values, one railroad song "The Wreck on the C & O,"11 states:

The doctor said to Georgie [the dying engineer], "My darling boy be still. Your life may yet be saved

1 G. Malcolm Laws, Native American Balladry, revised ed. (Philadelphia, 1964), p. 214, G 3.

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If it is God's precious will." "Oh no, oh no, that will not do, I want to die so free. I want to die for the engine I love One hundred and forty-three."

This occupational hero exists only for his one representative act. He is a leader only insofar as he represents the group in a struggle, but his leadership is brief and his battle impersonal. Instead of warring with opposing forces or the hero of the other side, his adversary is a condition of life imposed by the group making the trip on time, getting the logs down the river, getting the cattle to the railroad, etc., or natural occurrenc- es in the carrying out of his employment. Victory or death carries no transforming experience with it. Death is a necessary condition of life accepted fatalistically, and, in many cases, willingly. Heroism is not inherent in a character; it arises out of a situation, and the individual momentarily accepts the burden, seeing in it quick fame and death.

This sudden focus on an individual usually stresses, not his heroic nature, but his ordinary (and often less-than-ordinary) characteristics, such as Little Joe's small stature, unfortunate background, and relative inexperience in the cattle trade. Joe's death, and that of others of his kind, is therefore filled with pathos, not tragedy - an attitude almost antithetical to true heroic feeling. Often the point is made that the dead, sacrificed hero leaves behind a grieving mother or sweetheart,12 and these bereaved souls usually have the last word in the song. These ballads are as much a product of a sentimental tradition as a reversion to heroic song.

Other than dubious heroes of this sort, Anglo-American folk cultures in the United States have produced few figures whose actions call for heroic emulation. The idea of heroic action seems, in fact, to be antithet- ical to certain unstated values among rural white communities, at least as expressed in their primary narrative form, the ballad.

The major body of ballads collected from these folk communities shows how removed these people are from a culture of war or contest, for very few of their songs celebrate brave actions in battle. War, in fact, has played a small part in their lives. Rather, their song conventions are derived from the romances and other courtly modes of literature in which 12 As opposed to dying Negro heroes who are mourned by their many women; c.f. "John Henry," "Casey Jones," etc.

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heroic values had already been transmuted into courtship terms. The main subject of courtly literature was the love-battle in which action arose out of the maneuvering of a man in the love-conquest of a woman; victory was not only in defeating a foe but in the capture of the object of his affection. Deeds of valor occur, but not because a group needs to be protected or to have their greatness proclaimed, but because a lady is in need or a knight must prove himself to his lady. Masculinity is a totally sex-oriented proposition; proof of manliness lies in the winning of a lady's allegiance, and often her hand in marriage (especially in the later romances).

This love separation and reunification pattern is also found in Anglo- American balladry, but the attitudes and the outcomes are almost completely reversed. In the re-enactment of a romance situation, the young lover is more often than not defeated, either by the girl's father or by his own mother! Thus one finds in these songs a situation close to the one described in the third level of the developmental pattern concerned with attitudes toward the hero, in which heroism is totally defeated.

I have tried to show elsewhere that this defeated love pattern is clearly observable in those ballads canonized by Francis James Child which have been collected often in Anglo-American folksinging communities.13 There are, of course, a number of these ballads in which wrong-doing, including illicit love, is punished. But more important than these morality pieces are those which begin with the traditional separation of lovers but which end, not in the reuniting of the lovers and marriage, but in death and a common grave. Songs with this pattern include the most popular Child ballads found in North America: "Barbara Allen," "Lord Lovel," "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet," "Lady Alice," "Lady Margaret and Sweet William," and others. There are a few Child pieces often collected here in which the lovers are joined in the end, but it is almost never because of action initiated by the male lover. In "John of Hazlegreen," the groom's father picks out a bride, happily to find that it is the girl his son loves. More commonly, success occurs because the girl con- ceives some ruse by which they can marry, as in "Young Beichan" and "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington."

The same pattern, though not so exclusively, can be observed in the 13 "Patterns of Structure and Role-Relationship in the Child Ballad in America," to be published in the Journal of American Folklore (1966).

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later British "broadside" pieces collected in America. For instance, of the thirty-nine ballads which G. Malcolm Laws lists under the title of "Ballads of Family Opposition to Lovers," in his American Balladry From British Broadsides,14 fourteen have plots in which the lovers successfully manage to run away and marry, or overcome parental objections in some way. Of these, three involve a reversal of roles in which the lady takes the initiative (usually by dressing up as a boy), eight are of limited currency (found mostly in the Canadian Maritime Provin- ces) and only three are commonly found which preserve the hero- romance pattern of the man overcoming the opposition: "Locks and Bolts" (M 13), "The New River Shore" (M 26), and "The Bold Soldier" (M 27).

Just how this pattern of the defeat of the hero reflects the values of the communities which these songs perpetuate is difficult to tell, given our present insufficient data concerning other aspects of their lives. It is difficult to measure how important it is that most traditional singers in these communities are women (men seem to be more strongly attracted to instrumental music). Also, how much does the functional use of these songs in actual courtships affect their subject matter? The failure of the men in their love pursuit may simply have been used as a ploy in the traditional courtship contest between the sexes. This aspect of song choice may be further strengthened by the public nature of most court- ship occasions in these rural communities. On the other hand, much recent discussion concerning the economic plight of one important American region, the Southern Mountains, has argued that the people are tradition-bound and therefore unable to accomodate themselves to new situations and incapable of exhibiting initiative, a description that parallels to some extent the values discernable in these ballads.

III

A tremendous corpus of popular literature in the United States is devoted to the creation of heroic images and analysis of the heroic life. These works are directed toward the huge reading public in this essentially middle-class nation in which the ability to read assumes great importance. Under the influence of the sentimental and melodramatic modes so favored 4 First edition (Philadelphia, 1957), pp. 179-200.

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by bourgeois audiences, the heroes who arise in such fiction emphasize the dream values of city-dwellers: rebellion, the free life lived close to nature, personal integrity in spite of the corruptive demands of society, and complete self-realization through existence apart from others. If such figures seem reminiscent of the "natural man" of Rousseau-like thought, the relationship is not gratuitous. These ideas were fashionable during the early days of the United States.15

But there was much in the early national experience of the United States which was conducive to thinking and acting in such heroic terms. The newness and vastness of the land, plus the problems of wresting the land from the Indians and life from the soil, breathed the spirit of solitary adventure into American life, especially to those who moved into frontier areas, at least until the end of the nineteenth century. One could and did find realms in which bravery was demanded. Further, our history is in a sense one of adolescent search for national identity.16 Our revolu- tionary past, our reaction to the authoritative restrictions of Great Britain, emphasized this fact and has allowed American history to be seen by many as a purposive movement, a vast Utopian plan.

Even more important than national identity was the problem of the creation of an atmosphere in which each individual could find his own space. Individual freedom was a preoccupation of thinker and doer antedating independence. This did not mean that everyone had to accept the liberated state, but that anyone who wanted to search for it might do so with impunity. This attitude was productive of heroism, for it presup- posed individual worth and the possibility of certain individuals ex- pressing an inherent superiority. The ever present fact that anyone could make a "new life" for himself on the frontier gave the American experience its dominant tone of optimism and made adventure not only possible, but attractive. The adventurers came to be admired for their actions in carving out new worlds which they stamped with their own names.

15 See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (New York, 1950), and R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam (Chicago, 1955), for treatments of the typical American apothe- osis of the "natural man" in Edenic terms in popular literature and belles-lettres. 16 This concern for national identity had a literary demension. From Revolutionary times on, there was a constant call for an American epic, and many were attempted. Joel Barlow's Columbiad was probably the first. Later, Timothy Flint suggested Daniel Boone as a fit epic subject, perhaps after reading Byron's heroic treatment of Boone in Don Juan. The concept of national epic broadened to that of a national lit- erature under the proddings of many important literary figures from Emerson to Whitman and beyond.

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This emphasis on the efficacy of individual action had more than just an economic rationale (though that seems to have predominated from the beginning and become progressively more pronounced). Such individuality was inherent in the democratic philosophy and its doctrine of equal opportunity. Even more important was its foundation in the dominant Protestant religious beliefs. As Weber, and later Tawney, have shown, in the rapidly desacralized Protestant world, the idea of the importance of works was transformed and accommodated by the spirit of capitalism.17 The concept of divine works, which began in terms of bringing souls onto the proper path and supporting church values and activities, soon developed into a rationale for a materialistic attitude. To become wealthy came to mean that one was favored in the sight of God; thus, a religious rational arose for amassing capital and using it properly. In this way, the heroic "Christian Soldier" soon became the captain of commerce. As de Tocqueville exclaims as early as 1830, "Americans show a sort of heroism in their manner of trading."18 These values have persisted even after their sacred background has been forgotten.

It is not surprising in this atmosphere that heroes arose who fought their battles in the marketplace, and who won their victories over adversi- ty in the countinghouse rather than on the battlefield. The enemy of such heroes is poverty, and the pattern of victory usually involves some adher- ence to the "rag-to-riches" theme. The primary virtues of this "Horatio Alger"19 type differ little from any other hero; he must be firm, clever, com- pletely dedicated, resourceful, and above all adventurous, willing to take risks. He differs from other heroes only in his techniques, weapons, and final intent. This hero, as with all others, tries to build his world in his own image, glorifying his name and prowess in a virtual attempt to tran- scend death through his actions. It is because of this mutation of heroic values that such names as Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller command great respect and admiration long after these men have died.

However, such men rarely have their deeds sung by more than their own anxious coterie, a group which quickly dissolves after the death of

17 Most conveniently found in R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York, 1926). 18 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Edition, 1945), p. 442. 19 So named for the author (1843-1899) who wrote a series of popular novels con- cerned with economically resourceful heroes.

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its hero. Their names survive only proverbially and then not because of their prowess or cleverness, but only for their wealth. Their demise as popular figures probably occurs because they work within society and toward the center of the establishment. Wealth and snobbery in demo- cratic America seem to be characteristics not acceptable in a hero. Business, even in the jet age, is not active enough for truly heroic move- ment.

Of all the leaders of commerce, only that generic figure, the Yankee peddler, seems to have captured the public fancy for any period of time, and he did so in both the city and country, in popular literature and folklore.20 His bravery was a compound of mercantilistic audacity and willingness to travel into the untamed regions to find his fit adversary, the frontiersman. Their battle was a swapping contest, and, like all good heroes, the Yankee valued the style more than the result, the swap- ping more than the winning:

One Yankee swapped all the way to the Western Reserve, where he took up a claim, swapped in that region until he could swap no longer, swapped away his claim, and moved on from one piece of wild land to another, arriving at last on a sandy hillside with only the clothes on his back.2'

Jonathan, the Yankee peddler, escaping from the confines of his Puritan upbringing, nevertheless carried with him in his wide travels the Protestant ethic of the importance of works. In his drive for constant manipulation, he was at one and the same time the very spirit of common sense and thrift, and the complete and often amoral rebel. He was both the enemy of the established order (founded as it was on hypocritical sophisticated values) and the semidivine arranger who had to remake the world in his own ingenious image:

Moving about, setting things to rights, actively using his hands, the New Englander constantly observed that the great trouble with the world is that things are not in the right place. By simple locomotion you can turn a deficit into an asset, and turn misfortune into a gift from the gods. Take ice, for exam-

20 Constance Rourke in American Humor (New York, 1931), Ch. 1, describes this Yankee most perceptively and shows in what guises and where the character springs up. For illustrative texts of the Jonathan trader drawn from popular literary sources, see Richard M. Dorson, Jonathan Draws the Long Bow (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), Ch. 3, passim; B. A. Botkin, A Treasury of New England Folklore (New York, 1947), Part 1, Section 1. 21 Rourke, p. 17.

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ple. There is altogether too much of it in winter.... But move the ice to the tropics... .22

Ultimately, it is this bumptious rebelliousness and insistence on recreating the world so that it conforms to the boundaries of his personal ethos that fascinates us most about the Jonathan hero, not his abilities in commerce. He is the first full expression of the archetypal American popular hero, the rustic who by living with himself and nature learns to control life. He is gifted with a common-sense attitude which stands in bold distinction to the hypocrisies of middle-class society. He is basically innocent, and yet a whole man.

Jonathan was the first of many back-country heroes that arose in the American imagination. Though his popularity persisted well into the twentieth century in a number of mutations,23 he engendered far less interest than his successor, the backwoodsman.

Jonathan needed others around in order to exercise his wit, to assume his proper character. The frontiersman might come into civilization once in a while just to insist upon his superiority in any milieu, but he was more at home in the woods than anywhere else. There his companion was nature, and it was from this natural life that he derived his power. This power in great part depended upon his ability to preserve a belief in goodness, honor, and other virtues. Life with nature allowed him to rediscover man's primal innocence from which flowed all virtue. His fit adversary, then, was not so much the animals which he needed to kill - they seemed gladly to find their way in front of his rifle or into his traps - but rather the corrupt ways of society, constantly seeking to stain man's name.

The prototype of the frontier hero was Daniel Boone, and he owes his fame to certain popular writers of his time: John Filson, Timothy Flint, James Fenimore Cooper, Lyman Draper, and Dan Beard. Filson's biography seems to have achieved tremendous popularity and spread Boone's fame more widely than any other document. Boone's attributes which caught the fancy of the public were not only his bravery, his willingness to start the settlement on the other side of the Appalachians, but his wandering nature, individualism, desire for solitude, distaste for

22 Marjorie Barstow Greenbie, American Saga (New York, 1939), p. 33, quoted in Botkin, p. 4. 23 For instance, "Titus Moody," one of the continuing characters on the Fred Allen program, a classic radio show of the pre-World War II period.

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society, strength, and guile. Though he was in fact a leader of men, his other characteristics were the more attractive features of his image to the American public back East. It was his very inability to live with others for any length of time which Cooper seized and embellished in the creation of his Leatherstocking figure, and this independence of spirit has remained his best remembered attribute.24

The popularity of Boone, his values, and life-pattern, resulted in the creation or elevation of a number of other frontier heroes, both comic and serious: Mike Fink, Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, and the many other trapper and cowboy heroes of pulp fiction, radio, movies, and television.

Of these, Davy Crockett is perhaps the most widely and persistently popular of the sons of Dan'l. Davy was an historical figure (like Horatio Nelson or Lord Byron), who was so surrounded with adulation as a hero in his own lifetime that he went willingly into a foolish but heroic sacrificial death. His frontier background, combined with his independent attitudes and his graphic facility with words, caused him to be exploited by popular writers during his own lifetime, but his death in the Battle of the Alamo seems to have insured his continuing popularity.25

Professor Richard M. Dorson has shown that in many ways Davy's life, as reported in the almanacs and elsewhere, shows remarkable similarities to the biographical pattern of epic heroes:

The Crockett universe portrays the customary masculine, individualistic, relatively barbaric society devoted to hunting, fighting, drinking and sporting; the narrative structure focuses on the career of a central hero, his conquests, courtships, adventures, nomadic travels, [remarkable] birth and [heroic] death.26

Crockett is a comic hero; his adventures and pranks all express adolescent

24 For a convenient synopsis of Boone's life and image, see Marshall W. Fishwick, American Heroes: Myth and Reality (Washington, D.C., 1954), pp. 56-72. Kent Ladd Steckmesser, in The Western Hero in History and Legend (Norman, Okla., 1965), pp. 4-8, effectively argues that these attributes of Boone were almost completely the creation of his literary admirers. 25 For a good, brief description of Crockett's contemporary popularity and its historical causes, see Rourke, pp. 53-56. Richard M. Dorson has conveniently brought together the most important accounts of his life in Davy Crocket: American Comic Legend (New York, 1939). 26 Richard M. Dorson, "Davy Crockett and the Heroic Age," Southern Folklore Quarterly, VI (1942), 101.

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and even occasionally childish (trickster) values. Between the wildly hyperbolic boasts and the zany battles with animals and men, Davy has ample opportunity to prove his bravery at the same time he is producing laughter. His ability to fashion his own worlds and derive pleasure from the process provides a profound thumbing-the-nose at society and its restrictions; of course, city-dwellers loved the insult. In the wilderness where he could construct his own heroic ethic, Crockett illustrates the tendency of all such American heroes who follow - to be perpetual outsiders by insisting on the basic innocence of human nature.

More than this, Davy takes his style of expression from the real-life frontier boaster, the American apotheosis of Baron Miinchausen who tells formidable tall stories in which he is the featured performer.27 This humorous hero-type has his roots in American folklore, and thus Davy is closer to a folk hero than any of his successors. It is important in this respect that his exaggerations are usually verbal and obviously comic in intent, and are therefore of a different quality than the creations of the popular press which followed. Crockett, the man, lived in an area and time in which his expression of valor was functional. He lived and died a frontiersman, with the integrity of the values of that culture. As the fron- tier faded, his successors became less and less real as they were manufac- tured by the hack writers of the public press.28 The result is the exag- geration of now one, now another facet of his life and personality.

In comic apotheosis, the sons of Dan'l and Davy emerge as Paul Bunyan, Joe Magarac, and any number of other regional or occupational hyperbolic heroes. In these figures, Davy's boasting language is embroid- ered upon, as well as his already exaggerated adventures. But the style degenerates from the obviously comic to the cute, folksy, and fan- tastic. The audience for these tales is supposed to regard them as folksy lies, yet they are invariably written in a pseudo-fairy tale fashion in which the narrating person assumes naively that he is being taken seriously. The combination of this sophisticated over-exaggeration and

27 This type of folk hero, not mentioned in section II, is one which has only recently attracted much attention from folklorists, so it is difficult to tell how widely they may be encountered. See Jan Brunvand, "Len Henry, North Idaho Miinchausen," North- west Folklore, I (Summer, 1965), 11-19. He mentions some other similar characters. See also Percy MacKaye, Tall Tales from the Kentucky Mountains (New York, 1926). 28 For a description of how this kind of manufactured hero now dominates our concept of present heroism, see Daniel Boorstin, The Image, A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York, 1961), Ch. 2.

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the pseudo-folk style has resulted in the branding of this sort of literature as "fakelore."29

But these pseudo-heroes are not the major branch of the Crockett- Boone family tree. From Dan'l and Davy well into the present, the major type of American popular hero has been given the role of the outsider; they exist apart from society because of the variance of their vision of what life should be from that of the city or town dweller; they must fabricate their own ethos and carry it around with them wherever they go. Because of their unbounded optimism, clear-sightedness, and essential egotism, whenever this ethos collides with society's, that of the hero prevails.

Such heroes are almost always celibate. They live away from others, though they often have a male companion (generally an Indian, another type of "natural man") who shares in their values and power. They find that power in society breeds corruption, but power in isolation purifies. Whenever they enter a community, one can predict that they will find its wound, and cleanse it before they leave. For the most part, they are never able to exist in society for very long; they never marry, though they may occasionally kiss the prettiest girl in town. In a real sense, their need for adolescent rebellion is never assuaged. They not only never marry, they never find the real heroic culmination in death. They are permanently stuck in the hero role.30

The offspring of the frontiersman develops in three ways as the frontier ethic disappears. A minor strain has him persevere as he has always been: innocent, brave, adventurous, and rigidly moral, as in such figures as "The Lone Ranger." More significant in one mutation, the perpetually adolescent loner has grown old and more experienced (and often tired). In another, he has clung to his rebel-adolescent, outsider values and his ethic of contest, but he has lost his rigid morality; in the roar of success in battle he becomes completely taken in by his own image, and can therefore not conceive of doing any wrong.

Robert Byington has named the hero-grown-old the "Gentleman Killer," and has written an interesting description of his life-pattern. He

29 The term is an invention of Richard M. Dorson, and has been used by him in numerous of his writings. 30 This role-continuance is perhaps due as much to the commercial necessities of keeping a popular hero alive, so that future installments of his adventures can be purveyed, as to his adolescent fixation.

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posits five characteristics: (1) he is the killer of men ("To take human life, and to take it violently, is his ultimate function"); (2) he is a loner

("a solitary individual, more often than not a wanderer who ... invariably embodies a repudiation of civilized values"); (3) he has renounced what most men hold dearest; (4) he has a deep-seated melancholy ("a man out of love with himself and disillusioned by the world, a man gloomily obsessed by some dreadful purpose"); and (5) he is an aristocrat of nature ("inherently king and gentle ... self-restrained ... stoical").31

These heroes are characteristic of a land in which there is no longer any frontier. Society has so overtaken the land that autonomy, bravery, and natural virtue are hardly possible any longer. Every place he turns, this hero sees the corruption of power within society. Though no longer still innocent himself, he stands in defense of the values of innocence. He rides from one place to another cauterizing the inevitable wound of society, never staying one place, never marrying but envying those who can. He is weary of his fight but carries the stigma of the hero in his mission.

An interesting mutation of the "Gentleman Killer" might be termed the "Gary Cooper" hero (after the actor who portrayed him so often). This is the mature, weary man of action who remains a loner but lives within society, generally as a law officer. He is capable of both talking and acting bravely, but will do so only when forced into it by the imposi- tion of some false use of power, generally introduced from the outside (the town is a reflection of his individual ethos). This hero protects inno- cence from within - "So that they can grow up right," he says, as he points to a group of children clustered at his feet. In his comic apotheosis, he is Destry in "Destry Rides Again"; in his tragic form, lhe is Matt Dillon in "Gunsmoke."

These heroes of disillusioning experience are almost the diametric opposite of the third offspring of Davy and Dan'l, the eternally adolescent hero in the big city. Though this avatar of the frontier hero is placed in an urban environment, he has so adapted himself to the milieu that he has been able to preserve his bravery, power, and egotism. He also has preserved the frontiersman's autonomy, but he uses it to push the prin- ciple of individualism to the fullest. All heroes seem to have a license to kill because they represent right, but this city-hero absolutely delights 31 Robert Byington, "The Frontier Hero: Refinement and Definition, Singers and Storytellers (= Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, XXX) (Dallas, 1961), 140-155.

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in the kill. He, too, has a license (often a police badge or the card of a private detective), but he uses it much less discriminately than frontier heroes. The sternly moral, primitivistic, innocent hero has become the amoral egotist. No outcast from society, he controls from within. He is not only a fierce battler, but a great lover; this is just further proof of his masculine powers. But his Don Juanism merely underlines his adoles- cent values and amorality. The ancestors of this hero include the criminal inspector as well as the frontier hero, but he has transcended them all, appearing as Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, and most recently James Bond (authored by an Englishman, Ian Fleming, but much in the American mold and very popular in the United States).

There is only a small leap involved in making the criminal himself into a hero, given the city-hero's amoral ethos. The badman, as easily as any other man of action, can be portrayed as a rebel, an outsider, or one who is searching for identity through freedom of movement. Consequently, many notorious public enemies have been described by the press in heroic terms. Jesse James, Dillinger, Capone, Baby Face Nelson, and a number of others have captured the public imagination because of their audacity and rebellion in the face of authority. If these criminals should ultimately die at the hands of the law, they are simply reintroducing one facet of the heroic life into their performance: death in heroic style.

These criminals are representative of the way in which heroic values can and do deteriorate when adolescent rebellion and rejection of the constrictions imposed by society become central preoccupations, removed from any other imposition of an ethic. American society, in its nostalgia for heroic manifestations of the past, sows the seeds of its own potential destruction.32

32 I don't mean to argue here that this is the only, or even the most important direction of American hero worship. For instance, a recent trend of television in continuing shows has been to create strongly moral heroes who lead a group in the pursuit not of adventure (though that invariably happens along the way) but toward stability and rational society. Thus the show Rawhide chronicles a cattle drive; its hero, Gil Favor, has only one motivation, to get the cattle to the buyer as quickly and profitably as possible, while protecting his men and the rights of those he meets along the way. Similar nonadolescent and non-Utopian values are expressed in The Virginian, Wagon Train, and a number of others. This impulse for the hero to have a job within a functioning society and to do it well has been transmuted into a city environment in the many "problem" shows, those concerned with pro- fessions: social work, medicine, law, etc.

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Whether in the 'cute' apotheosis of a Paul Bunyan or the serious 'escapist' transmutation of Mike Hammer, the descendants of the frontier hero have become progressively exaggerated and dream-like. They are real in no sense; they do not represent values which can be acted upon except by social deviants. They are moral or physical grotesques who fit into no imaginable society. They fulfill only a steam- valve function to the group that reads of their exploits.

The three types of American heroes discussed above differ in many respects, but they do share one attribute - they all show the hero to be fixed permanently at the rebellious stage. None provide for any feeling of final transforming experience. The American hero does not emerge from his experiences regenerated. More often, he is just tired, or dead. Not even society is more than slightly bettered and renewed by his activities, for the hero must return constantly in his adolescent apotheosis, if he has not already been killed at the hands of family or institutional authority.

But this may not represent the full conception of the American hero, for it has been impossible to discuss here every type found in the United States. For instance, there is a strong element of mock-heroism in American life and letters that has not been discussed, which might be of great importance in assessing the subject from a broader view. Such a type has appeared recently in two forms: (1) as a superman who is more bluster than action, or too naive to function effectively (as found in comic strips, such as "Lil Abner"), and (2) as a non-hero, a schlemiel who lives on a sub-heroic level in an heroic situation within a group that asks for heroism (found in many recent novels).

The argument that I have been primarily maintaining in this survey has been that heroes, when they exist, reflect something of the cultural values and situations around them. As such, an examination of their deeds in relation to other aspects of the life of the group will be helpful in understanding the culture of the group. Understanding should lead to communication.

University of Texas Austin, Texas

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