Folk hero
A folk hero is type of hero, real or possibly mythological, whose life and deeds appear in songs, stories and films. The character often, but not necessarily, lives outside the law in some way.
The folk hero often begins life as a normal person, but is transformed into someone extraordinary by significant life events, often in response to social injustice, and sometimes in response to natural disasters.
Historically documented folk heroes
- Robin Hood - English outlaw usually associated with the motto "Steal from the rich, give to the poor"
- Johnny Appleseed - planted apple trees trhoughout the northeasten United States
- Bonnie and Clyde - bank robbers who evaded retribution in the United States in the 1930s
- Casey Jones - United States railroad engineer who chose to die rather than abandon his locomotive during a collision
- Davy Crockett - United States frontiersman who died at the Alamo
- Kaluaiko'olau - Hawaiian who evaded deportation for leprosy by hiding in the Hawaiian rain forests [1]
- Ned Kelly - Australian outlaw
- Wong Fei Hung - Chinese doctor, martial artist, and revolutionary
Possibly apocryphal folk heroes
- John Henry - African-American who challenges a steam hammer
- Till Eulenspiegel - German trickster
- Fionn mac Cumhaill - Irish warrior
- Tomoe Gozen - Japanese woman samurai warrior
Folk heroes known to be fictional
- Paul Bunyan - outsized lumberjack of the North Woods
- Pecos Bill - Texas cowboy, featured in numerous tall tales
- The Little Dutch Boy - Saves Holland from disaster by persisting in keeping his finger in a dike; first mentioned in the 1865 novel Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates
Current folk heroes
Only the passage of time reveals which folk heroes will endure; the following persons have been described as folk heroes in the current international media.
- Abdul Kalam - current President of India, known as The Missile Man of India [2]
- José Bové - French anti-globalization activist[3]
- Marvin Heemeyer, heroic revolutionary in the United States who sacrificed his life against corruption on June 4, 2004.
- Chico Mendes - Brazilian rubber worker who defended the Amazon rainforests from development
- Hassan Nasrallah - Lebanese leader during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict[4] [5]
References
- ^ http://starbulletin.com/96/07/25/features/story3.html About Kaluaiko'olau
- ^ http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0207/msg00465.html About Abdul Kalam
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1143951.stm About José Bové
- ^ http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,433399,00.html Hassan Nasrallah as folk hero
- ^ http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28arabs.html