The Classic Disillusioned Hero

	Over the years many literary techniques, themes, and styles are used and developed. Once they are in use they are often repeated by future authors.  Homer set the standard for the classical hero.  Homer’s formula for the classical hero reappears constantly throughout modern literature.  Ernest Hemingway, a modern writer from the lost generation of writers, recreates the Homeric classical hero in a number of his novels.  The Hemingway character is the classical tragic hero that originated in Greece.
	The classical hero originated in the early Greek literature.  The word classical, when used as a literary term generally refers to the literature of the early Greeks.  The classical hero emerged from the works of authors such as Aristotle, Sophocles and Homer.  The classical hero as it is thought of today, was primarily developed by the Greek poet Homer around the 10th or 11th centuries B.C.  Homer formulated his hero in the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.  Homer’s classical hero was Odysseus.  The epic of the classical period vary in narrative but they have the same general themes and type of hero.  
	The main theme of classical literature is the attempt to overcome Fate.  The people of ancient Greece believed in the mythological Gods (Zeus, Athena, Hermes etc.) and they believed that their fate was decided by the Gods.  Many of these characters went against the will of the Gods and tried to make their own Fate.  The epics depict the struggle of the classical hero against the Gods. The results of his actions are usually tragic in result.  Homer in The Odyssey uses his hero Odysseus to portray the battle between the will of man and the will of the Gods.  His theme is, no matter how hard mankind struggles against Fate, he cannot make his own fate. It is in the hands of the Gods.
	 In The Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus spends ten years battling Fate (the Gods), trying to return home to Ithaca.  Odysseus just finished fighting for ten years in the Trojan wars.  Now it is time for him to return home, however his plans to return straight home are thwarted.  Odysseus’s ship gets lost in a fog, and then he encounters the Cyclops.  Later in his journey home he is imprisoned on Calypso’s island. Once he leaves there Poseidon sends a storm to shipwreck him.  He encountered many trials on his long journey.
	"'I long for home, long for the sight of home.
	If any god has marked me out again
	for shipwreck, my tough heart can undergo it.
	What hardship have I not long since endured” (5. 229-32)
Odysseus endured an encounter with the Cyclops, the temptation of Calypso, and Poseidon’s wrath.  His journey home took ten years.  He started the journey with his own fate planned out but later realized it was entirely hands of the Gods.  
	Homer uses Odysseus to show how man can never overcome fate but must battle his best to overcome it.  When Odysseus started his journey all he wanted to do was return home to his family in Ithaca.  This was his plan and not the plan of the Gods. When the beautiful nymph Calypso, possessed by love for him, had imprisoned him on her island, fate intervened.  Zeus (the most powerful God) sent Hermes (the messenger God) to rescue Odysseus from Calypso. Hermes persuaded Calypso to let Odysseus build a ship and leave.  When Poseidon sent the storm upon Odysseus, Athena (the God of Love) intervened to save Odysseus from Poseidon’s wrath.  Odysseus was never in control of his fate.  “What hardship have I not long since endured at sea, in battle! Let the trial come." (5. 232-33) But he kept on fighting for what he believed in and the Gods saw his determination and they changed his fate for the better.  Odysseus shows how Fate cannot be overcame but if man tries his best and goodness is strived for then the outcome will be positive.   
	The Hemingway classical hero, like Odysseus battles fate but in a modern setting.  Throughout Hemingway’s novels his protagonist constantly battles against fate but his protagonists always fall short of their own goals.  Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea and Jake Barns in The Sun Also Rises are three examples of Hemingway’s characters that battle fate, but do no completely overcome it.  Instead of battle the ancient Greek mythological Gods Hemingway’s characters battle fate within everyday relationships, war, and nature.
	Robert Jordan in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great example of a character that struggles against fate but falls short.  Robert Jordan left the U.S. to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish civil war. He has been given the mission to blow up a bridge as part of a Republican offensive against the fascists.  In his short time in the Republican guerrilla camp he meets Maria, a young woman sheltered by the camp, and they fall in love. He finally begins to live. Robert Jordan lived an entire life in three days, the three days he was at the camp.  Robert and Maria have the dream of going back to Madrid to start a life together but fate has other plans.  “El Sordo was not at all afraid of dying but he was angry at being on this hill which was only utilizable as a place to die..." (Hemingway, For Whom 312)  Robert Jordan’s quote foreshadows his own death and his philosophy that one needs to accomplish something before he dies.  Robert completes his mission, he destroys the bridge but during his escape, he is killed by a fascist officer. Hemingway’s Robert Jordan and the classical hero are similar; they both lead a life of purpose but are not in control of their own fate.  Robert wanted to go to Madrid with Maria and Odysseus took ten years to return home. Robert Jordan is not Hemingway’s only character to show classical traits.
	Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea constantly struggles against the sea and Fate. Santiago is a symbol for mankind and the marlin, the greatest catch of his life, is a symbol for Nature.  Santiago starts out with bad luck, he has gone 84 days without a catch.  "To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me." (Hemingway, Old Man 89)  Santiago fights for 3 days with the Marlin and battles off countless sharks.  When he returns back to Cuba from the sea he is completely exhausted and the Marlin has been shaved to the bone by the sharks. All that remains is the largest skeleton any fisherman in the village has every seen.  Santiago fought with all his might but the sea did not give him the fish, only a trophy of his efforts.  
	“Santiago conforms to the model of the classical hero in two important respects. 	First, he displays a rare determination to understand the universe …. Second; the 	old man possesses a tragic flaw that will lead to his downfall: pride. Santiago’s 	pride carries him far, not only metaphorically but literally—beyond his fellow 	fishermen into beautiful but, in the end, terribly cruel waters. As in classical epics, 	the most important struggle in Hemingway’s novella is a moral one.” (Lichtenstein 2)  Lichtenstein agrees that Santiago has classical traits. Santiago battled Fate and lost his greatest catch but not without a moral victory over nature. Just as Odysseus had several moral victories in his journey home to Ithaca.  
	Hemingway uses Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises to show how powerless man is against Fate.  Jake Barnes has many struggles in his life. Fate has dealt him multiple blows. Some he can over come and others he cannot.  “The end of the line. All trains finish there. They don't go on anywhere."  (Hemingway, Sun Also 239) By the end of the novel Jake has reached the end of his line, he cannot have his happiness, Lady Ashley because of the wound fate dealt him.  He is completely powerless.
	Hemingway shows Jake’s powerlessness with his unobtainable love of Lady Brett Ashley.  The key events in the formation of Jake’s character occurred long before the novel begins. As a soldier in World War I, Jake was wounded. Although he does not say so directly, there are numerous moments in the novel when he implies that, as a result of his injury, he has lost the ability to have sex.  The fact that Lady Ashley, the love of his life, refuses to enter into a relationship with him compounds this problem. Jake suggests that she does not want to because it would mean giving up sexual intercourse.  There is nothing that Jake can do to make Brett have a relationship with him.  He feels alone among his friends because he cannot have sex, he is isolated.  Fate put Jake in a state of powerless isolation even among his friends.  “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.” (Hemingway,  Sun Also 8) Jake feels that he is not really living because of his failed love due to his injury.
	Jake’s life was completely changed by fate when he was rendered impotent by the war wound.  Once he received the wound his disillusionment began.  He is now weaker than all the men around him.  He cannot longer have sexual relationships, which were prevalent among the lost generation of writers (Post World War I writers in Europe, Jake was a journalist).  Jake does not accept his fate, he battles against it.  His love for Brett costs him numerous relationships.  He does not realize that his love for Brett will always leave him unhappy.  Fate takes his happiness away from him and he struggles to cure his fateful wound but fails.
	Jake is powerless against his fate.  Until he chooses to move on and better himself he will be unhappy. “Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.” …“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”  Jake realized at the end of the novel that he will never have Brett.  Fate took such a “damned good time” away from him, and he was powerless to recover from it.  Jake shows no matter how hard man tries to overcome his fate sometimes he cannot, and he will always fail.  Jake like Odysseus needed to let go of his need to control his own fate. Jake did not and is left disillusioned. Odysseus moved on and returned home.
	Hemingway has been considered a classical writer by some of his fellow writers and critics.
	"If the word 'classical' still has any meaning except just as the opposite of 'romantic,' 	then we can say that Ernest Hemingway was a classical writer. … he pared life down 	to what he took to be the essentials, …. He had neither the romantic interest in the 	untypical nor the adventure-story writer's interest in action for its own sake." (John Wain) Hemingway wrote abort moral battles and the battle against fate.  His characters have no control over their fate, and they are often disillusioned.  Wain thinks Hemmingway is classical because Hemingway pared life down to the essentials, man versus nature (fate).  This was very common in classical literature. Odysseus battled the sea and Poseidon’s storm, he was fighting for survival.    The Hemingway character is the classical tragic hero.  He battles fate, will all his might, even if he does not win his battle he still can accomplished a moral victory like Santiago.  If he strives hard for goodness then his fate will improve just like the hero of classical literature.  The multiple similarities and repeated themes between Homer and Hemingway show that Hemingway’s characters are classical in nature.