Speech given by Sheldon Oberman
to the Manitoba Association of Teachers of English
at Provincial SAG Conference Oct 03

The Hero, the Villain and the Shmo

It's power I want to discuss - the power of being an authority, a positive authority, or perhaps a negative authority and about those who must face our authority, struggle with it, learn from it, and in time, inherit it.
After all - isn't that what we want for our kids? To grow up and to take over? That's a big expectation. And it's a long and demanding journey, a heroic journey.

It's this latest book of mine that started me thinking about heroes. The Island of the Minotaur; Greek Myths of Crete. The book is full of heroes. It's set in that mysterious civilization that came before the Greeks - The Minoan Civilization on Crete. It lasted 1500 years yet it was destroyed in a single night by a volcanic explosion much like Atlantis - some say it was Atlantis. Almost nothing survived except those glorious tales of heroes - the tales later made famous by the Greeks, which I researched for years and have now retold.

In all of them the hero has his or her teachers and guides, villains and monsters- all sorts of positive and negative authorities. Some of the heroes make it and some of them don't.
Do you remember when you first discovered the Greek myths? For me I was a little kid nosing around a big library. I was used to glossy books of fairy tales, dinosaurs and cute fuzzy animals. Then I saw on a higher shelf a faded and old fashioned book. On its spine, embossed in gold, was an image of a Greek hero. He was facing - I don't know what - a monster I suppose. Maybe he was Hercules searching for the Great White Bull or Theseus about to wrestle the Minotaur or that hero of the intellect Daedalus, inventing the Labyrinth.
The book was beyond my grasp, quite literally and when I asked the librarian for help she shook her head. She didn't think I was ready for that higher level of literature. Instead she handed me a big book of trucks.

It took a couple years before I could reach that golden book - my first real book with only a few bookplates and so many tales .There I found young Icarus flying on man made wings toward heavenly Olympus, not realizing that the sun was melting the wax that held his feathers. His father realized and was calling up to him, "Don't fly so high!" - And the distressed Princess Europa who had climbed upon a milk white bull only to discover it was the god Zeus in disguise and he was galloping off with her over the waves, taking her across the wine dark sea to begin a new civilization on the island of Crete. Theseus, the Minotaur, Medea the witch, Phaedra the last queen of Crete, the scheming King Minos, the tragic Bronze Giant, Zeus, Dionysus, Poseidon; it was a whole other world. I feasted with gods and I quested with heroes.

Gradually other heroes joined them from other distant worlds- Moses, David, King Solomon and Joshua at the walls of Jericho, - the Norse gods Thor and Loki, Brunhilda and the Valkyries, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Zorro and Gene Autry, the Mummy, the Wolfman, Superman, Spiderman and Wonder Woman. What a glorious pantheon! They were great heroes every one.

Later, in university, I learned how much they really did have in common. My professor taught me the Heroic Pattern. The hero comes from royal or divine parents but is somehow displaced and ends up being raised by common folk, (in my case, those folk were my parents - I always suspected I was adopted and came from finer stuff.

There are positive authorities to guide him; a god, an oracle or some Wise One. (I had Mr. Friedman the butcher at the kosher meat market and I had Mr. Magoral the caretaker of our apartment block. He had grown up in the Old Country and he knew the secret ways of gypsies, wonder working rabbis and Russian revolutionaries. And if both Mr. Magoral and Mr. Friedman were ever stumped, there was usually a school teacher I could call on in a pinch.)

The next stage in the heroic pattern begins the CRISIS. It summons the hero to a Great Task. I seemed to be constantly on alert, waiting for my task - listening for sirens, screams, a desperate pounding at my door. I did once rescue a bird which I considered my preparatory task - all heroes have tasks that prepare them for their GREAT TASK

I knew what I would need; special weapons, magical creatures and, of course, noble companions I was deciding between Zavy Cohen who had top marks in school and Jerome Phomin who was not only older but had a black leather jacket and his own pocket knife.

The hero then starts upon the Journey, the Quest to fulfill his Task. This generally involves defeating a monster, some fearful creature who is threatening not just the hero but others like the blonde and famously freckled Diane Barker who never paid attention to me but most certainly would if she ever needed to be rescued. You see - the hero had to serve others not just himself. That's what made him noble and worthy. If he was selfish and proud, he'd get no help or he'd get the wrong help and he'd fail.

Generally the hero had to defeat not just a monster but also a monstrous person, the negative authority figure, a villain of with power, malice and a destructive pride that the Greeks called "hubris".

I imagined my gym teacher who'd persecute me with extra push ups or worse, a certain teacher - still at large in the school system - who loved to swing a strap. And even if the hero failed, he could still be a hero if he had stayed true to his beliefs.

But the rewards of success were wonderful He won the love of a woman, the respect of the community, fame, wealth and power. The old, good king or the old, bad king conveniently died or stepped aside and the hero, having proven himself, took over and became the new ruler. That's the heroic pattern as I learned it.
Isn't that what we want for our kids? To grow up - to prove themselves and to take over? Isn't that what someone once wanted for us?To achieve love, wealth, recognition and authority in our world. That's why those stories are so important. The hero's journey mirrors our own life journey.And the heroic pattern is not just in the myths.

It's in so many stories that we teach - only the details; the faces and places change. At its core is the plot structure or narrative arc which is eternally the same: one can recite it like a mantra; introduction, complication, rising action, climax or anticlimax, falling action, conclusion.

The protagonist faces a conflict where he or she succeeds or fails and at the conclusion, the resolution, there is some sort of understanding: emotional, intellectual or moral. The protagonist has changed, hopefully for the better.

Heroic tales are everywhere. We are overwhelmed with the mass of mass media that mass produces heroes; commercialized, sanitized, vulgarized heroes, anti heroes, celebrities and wannabees.
Why? Because we need heroes so badly that we keep consuming them like fast food. Just the other day I saw a fellow walking down the street with a six pack of beer and a six pack of videos. I'm sure they were all action hero movies.

Are we substituting quantity for quality? Substituting appearance for the real thing? Maybe we're not understanding or not teaching what a hero really is. Maybe that's why so many remain so unsatisfied.
The problem is that all the false heroes are obscuring the real ones, confusing the true nature of a hero, especially to our kids. A hero is not someone with the bling bling, the sex appeal, the fancy cars, the movie or record contract and the paparazzi.

I think we know, at least instinctively, what a hero is. But how do we describe one? How do we teach our youth so they can recognize heroism in its wonderful but often modest forms? Because when our youth do recognize the traits of heroism, they will emulate them.

As a young child I knew exactly what a hero was. My world may have been limited but it was crowded with heroes. Until there came a point when I lost them. I think what I actually lost was that part of myself.
Gene Autry was a Saturday afternoon soap opera cowboy. His movies were all pretty much the same; he had to save the beautiful heroine from losing her father's ranch to the dastardly villain and his gang of thugs. I would sit in the Deluxe Theatre on Main Street with hundreds of other kids gobbling our popcorn as we waited for Gene.

When he appeared on screen we exploded into cheers and then booed the bad guy. I sat mesmerized in that innocent darkness not yet realizing that the world was far more complicated than the movies. Now I understand that we weren't all cheering for Gene. He was too perfect, too much of an ideal. Some were secretly cheering for the villain. Some had already knew that they could never be a hero but since they still craved attention, power and perhaps some pretty girl, they had found another role to admire - the role of bad guy or one of his thugs
There were other roles as well; the beautiful but helpless victim; the kindly but impotent father.

As for myself, I gradually shifted away from imagining myself as the hero. I began identifying with his harmless sidekick, Smiley Burnette, the fellow who couldn't do anything well except make the hero look good by comparison. Smiley was the foil, the joker, though he was not really a joker, he was more of a joke. He probably had a drinking problem and a string of wrecked marriages. But I just saw him as Smiley, whom the great Gene Autry liked, almost as much as his horse. In truth, Smiley was a loser. Smiley was, to put it in Yiddish, a shmo.

The trouble with those old movies is that there was only room for one hero just like some classes have only room for one top student, or a few top students and the rest of the class has to find other roles - trouble makers, victims and shmos.

I am not suggesting that we stop teaching about heroes, far from it. We need them more than ever in this age of disillusionment and cynicism. We need the grand myths and romantic tales just as much as we need to dream. Those mythic figures have all the power of vivid dreams, the great dreams of entire civilizations. But like dreams, they are not meant to be realistic - they inspire us at an subconscious symbolic level. They are archetypes, symbols as commanding as images set in stained glass. They illuminate the various stages of our lives.
Carl Jung described 4 levels of hero. All levels have value. And we may progress through them like stages of development.

1) The physical hero who is driven by his instincts and appetites like Samson, Hercules, Tarzan, the Amazon warriors.
2) The hero as individual; the adventurer, the artist or lover such as James Bond or Marilyn Monroe
3) The hero with a larger purpose. A leader of society or shaper of new ideas; Karl Marx, Kennedy, Edison, Madame Currie, our own Nellie McClung
4) The enlightened one, the spiritual visionary - Mother Teresa, King, Ghandi, Joan of Arc, Oedipus at Colonnus.
Whether these heroes were real or legend they have become idealized characters; role models for different stages of our lives. They direct us on our journey.

However, there will always be a huge gap between the ideal hero and our own sense of ourselves as limited and imperfect human beings. So we have to balance the ideal with the real by recognizing the extraordinary in ordinary people, the heroism achieved by common people like ourselves who come from common places like our own.

By raising them up and honouring them we raise and honour the potential in each one of us.
While preparing this talk, I drifted from my desk and into my back yard mulling over my thoughts amid the fallen leaves. "What's the matter, Mr. Oberman? You got nothing to do?" It was my elderly neighbour, Mary Slawchuk. She had plenty to do. She was carrying a tower of cardboard boxes she'd retrieved from the nearby recycling bin. She wanted them to hold her leaves. "Sure," she said, "Why waste money on plastic garbage bags?" I helped her with her boxes and as we carried them into her backyard she advised me on how much I could save with a clothes line, a vegetable garden and a water barrel like hers. "You got so much now, you don't worry," she said. "But who knows what can happen?"

Then Mrs. Slawchuk told me what could happen, what had happened to her in Poland when she was a girl. How the Nazis took her from her farm and her family. How they made her a slave labourer in a munitions factory with little food or possessions and no rights, How she was considered a subhuman.

"We were dirt to them," she told me, "and dirt can say nothing and do nothing." Then one day one of her friends accidentally damaged a machine. The Nazi supervisor began beating her terribly. Without thinking, Mary pushed herself between them and glared at the man. What would have happened then, was he would beat her as well or probably something far worse. But the man hesitated, he lowered his eyes and turned away.

Mary had saved her friend. That had happened 60 years ago but as Mary Slawchuk recalled it, her face glowed as proudly as it must have on that day. In that defining moment she had proven that she was not dirt, that she was a greater human being than that member of the "Master Race". Mrs. Slawchuk did not go on to do anything extraordinary, she did not become a freedom fighter or a great social activist. She led and she still leads a simple life of family and home but that moment can never be taken away. It changed her and changed her world.

There are real and true heroes among us. Even within us. We need to think about the people who have been heroes in our own lives. Who are your heroes? In your family? In your community? Among those you've met in the larger world? Who has inspired you, given you courage, hope, faith, vision? Who has awakened your mind or spirit, your heart or will?

I think of my personal heroes as my private board of directors. They are always with me, in the back of my mind or the bottom of my heart. I sometimes hear their voices, see the expressions on their faces, especially when I'm making some important decision. I think, What would they do? What would they say? Perhaps we each have a private board of directors. And it's up to us if we fill that board with friends or enemies, with heroes or villains or shmos, with harsh judges or caring teachers. It's one of those caring teachers that I want to tell you about now.
The teacher who taught me the most was not trained or certified. In fact, I was probably the only student he ever had.

Mr. Friedman was a North End butcher who used to frequent my parents' cafe on Main Street. He was a short, stout man with a bad lisp and glasses as thick as Coke bottles yet Mr. Friedman had a remarkable talent. He could walk confidently into a room, face an audience and hold them with a clever and convincing speech.
My mother decided that if Mr. Friedman could overcome all his obvious handicaps, he could teach me how to overcome mine.

I was merely awkward, self conscious and lacking basic social skills; afflictions of a typical thirteen year old, especially an isolated child lost in books and day dreams. The two of them made some sort of an arrangement. I doubt any money was involved.

Mr. Friedman stopped by the cafe one evening when I was working a shift. He studied me as I washed dishes and swept the floor. He eventually called me over and told me what he and my mother had decided. He said he wanted me to write a five minute speech and to present it to him at his house on Sunday.
I have no idea what I wrote or how I sounded but I do remember that he was tremendously impressed. He then gave me tips on how to speak, how to pause, how to stand and gesture.

The next week I returned with a better speech and a better presentation. Again, he was tremendously impressed and offered even more tips.
His praise would have surprised my teachers who were not at all impressed with me. They would cite my short attention span, poor work habits, lack of respect and, of course, my constant day dreaming, further afflictions of a thirteen year old.

So I was left to Mr. Friedman who managed to inspire me to write and rewrite, to memorize and rehearse week after week because Mr. Friedman offered me something no other teacher did, something rare and wonderfully nurturing - his sincere and enthusiastic appreciation.

I made about fifteen speeches before he judged me ready for the next level. He took me downtown and had me address his public speaking group, a dozen or so businessmen who formed the local Toastmasters Club. I practised for days and gave them my best speech and all of them were tremendously unimpressed. After all, I was just some kid.

But I wasn't just some kid to Mr. Friedman. He kept me writing and memorizing and trying more techniques. What an odd pair we were as we got off the bus from the North End every Monday night and we entered the YMCA, especially odd to that stodgy group of businessmen - me, a gangly, self conscious young dog and my "teacher", the lisping butcher.

Yet somehow I learned, or somehow Mr. Friedman changed me because finally, one night I earned that group's grudging applause. It was a great moment for a kid like me, a kid who could have turned out to be anything, or nothing at all.

That experience changed me greatly. It woke me up to the world "out there". I was no longer lost in my thoughts and feeling and fantasies. I could connect. I could speak.

Now, of course, I speak before groups all the time - to my own students, to whole schools when I visit as an author, to conferences of teachers and writers and to the general public. I can even watch the people in the audience as they watch me. I'm seldom nervous, I like it up there. But I'd surely like to see my old teacher one more time, see him watching and listening as I present, nodding and smiling the way he always did, following everything I say as if I were speaking the golden truth, and no one could say it better.

Oh, Mr. Friedman, you old alchemist, when I think of how you thought of me, I shine.
When we fail to teach about heroes, fail to share the world's wisdom about those who have done the extraordinary then our kids will go elsewhere to look for heroes - to the gangs, or the worst sorts of movies and videos and books as well where rage is so often mistaken for courage, where lust is mistaken for love, and success has nothing to do with sacrifice or service to others where the hero is really not so different than the villain.

Or they may settle for weaker roles such as the helpless victims or the clownish sidekicks who have little sense of principal or belief or their own true potential.

How do we teach our students about heroes so they may be inspired and so they may aspire to something fine and worthy? How do we show them that heroes do not have to be perfect? That heroes are people like us, who struggle with the life tasks they are given who overcome their limits; limits of circumstance, limits of character. And somehow in someway, they succeed. And not all the time. Even the greatest hero achieves greatness only at moments.

We have to believe in our own true potential. We have to grow and keep growing into our better, bigger self, that self we sometimes achieve. You know it. We are not strangers to that person. We become that person at times, in places or with certain people. When we are having that good day, or good hour and we manage to be the teacher we want to be, or the parent or the friend.

I have been doing yoga and one day after feeling so bent over and constricted I did the exercises and I felt great. My teacher pointed at me and said, You're getting taller!" And I was - she was making me taller by having me stretch.

We all need to stretch and we need to teach our kids how to stretch so they can become taller. Because we are all on the same path.

The End

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