My name is Maki Chapman, and I am a Freshman at Chico State, with my major being Chemistry. I have always been interested in heroes, even when I was very small. I’m sure many people were: many Americans grew up with Superman or Batman cartoons, and even before cartoons, there are centuries of stories that people have read, detailing the exploits of Beowulf, Hercules, and D’artagnan.
As I have gotten older, however, I am less interested in the heroes themselves, and more about what they mean to various cultures. Why is Superman an American icon? Why has Beowulf and Hercules survived the centuries? And who the heck is Gilgamesh, and why is he so important to the literary world?
My task is to provide those answers, and more, as I explore the many facets of human culture. With the hope that I can expand my knowledge base, I am going to attempt to look around the world, and through all of time, to learn more about heroes as a concept, rather than focus on any one culture’s heroes.
Because of that, I am going to discuss real life heroes in addition to fictional ones. People like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Sun Tzu: what makes them heroes? Why have their names been etched into history as the “good guys?” And who haven’t included them as the good guys in their stories?
These are the questions that I plan on posing, and hopefully answering. This blog is here as a platform for me to discuss these various topics, and hopefully inform you that these topics exist, and what they mean for human culture in general.
Blog of Heroes 