Gandalf, yes—he does say that that the point of his existence was to be the counter to to Sauron—but Aragorn, no. He was a ranger before and became a king after, with just six months of heroism in between.
Gandalf’s essentially an angel, so I’m not sure concepts like dedicating one’s life to something conventionally apply to him. But “ranger”, for Aragorn, seems to cover an awful lot of heroism—and I wouldn’t be surprised if “king” did as well.
Being a hero in epic fantasy is often less about what you do and more about what you are. Lord of the Rings handles that in an interesting way, by arranging events such that the fate of the world hinges on the actions of characters who’re decidedly unheroic by genre standards—antiheroes in the classical, not the grimdark, sense of the word—but it plays the mantle-of-destiny thing more or less straight if we’re talking about anyone who isn’t a hobbit.
Gandalf’s essentially an angel, so I’m not sure concepts like dedicating one’s life to something conventionally apply to him.
Well, a Maia, and while I think his life was dedicated to a particular cause, there are enough hints that it’s not Gandalf himself who did the dedicating :-/ Though he certainly seemed to be perfectly fine with that.
antiheroes
I don’t think so—the hobbits are not “anti”, they are unexpected heroes, but pretty straight heroes otherwise.
Also, Gandalf is a Maiar, a supernatural being. He’s not a human, or a human stand-in such as a hobbit.
If I build a battle robot and the robot goes to battle, is it a hero?
Are angels heroes?
It’s a near-universal trope of superhero comics that heroes can’t lead normal lives and that when they do, they’re inevitably reminded of the inherent dangers, e.g. perfect hostages in the form of their loved ones.
“Normal life” is a relative term. I can think of few superheroes who are in a situation analogous to what was described by emr above with respect to Eliezer’s consort. There are certainly individual obstacles that superheroes face that normal people don’t, but the overall effect of these obstacles on the superhero’s life is limited, even if they loom large in an individual story.
If I build a battle robot and the robot goes to battle, is it a hero?
Are angels heroes?
The smartassed answer would be “decades of anime say yes”, but the real answer is that this is the kind of thing we could argue about for hours without making progress, because the word’s broad enough to encompass several mutually contradictory meanings.
This thread is happening in the context of a larger discussion about heroic responsibility, however, and I think “sidekick” here is most productively framed against that concept. Heroic responsibility means shouldering all the ills of the world; a sidekick’s responsibility is doing whatever the hero needs done so that they can more effectively get to the heroing. These approaches are rare in media; even Frodo and Samwise, the examples of the OP, only count in a kind of loose, metaphorical sense. But that doesn’t really matter, because we’re not doing media analysis here, we’re doing motivational psychology.
I’m not yet convinced that this is the healthiest or most productive way to conceptualize heroism or sidekickkery, at least for most people (you could insert a long-winded digression about Fate/stay night here, but it wouldn’t mean much to people that haven’t played the game). It beats arguing semantics, though, so let’s stick with it for now.
Gandalf, yes—he does say that that the point of his existence was to be the counter to to Sauron—but Aragorn, no. He was a ranger before and became a king after, with just six months of heroism in between.
Gandalf’s essentially an angel, so I’m not sure concepts like dedicating one’s life to something conventionally apply to him. But “ranger”, for Aragorn, seems to cover an awful lot of heroism—and I wouldn’t be surprised if “king” did as well.
Being a hero in epic fantasy is often less about what you do and more about what you are. Lord of the Rings handles that in an interesting way, by arranging events such that the fate of the world hinges on the actions of characters who’re decidedly unheroic by genre standards—antiheroes in the classical, not the grimdark, sense of the word—but it plays the mantle-of-destiny thing more or less straight if we’re talking about anyone who isn’t a hobbit.
Well, a Maia, and while I think his life was dedicated to a particular cause, there are enough hints that it’s not Gandalf himself who did the dedicating :-/ Though he certainly seemed to be perfectly fine with that.
I don’t think so—the hobbits are not “anti”, they are unexpected heroes, but pretty straight heroes otherwise.
Also, Gandalf is a Maiar, a supernatural being. He’s not a human, or a human stand-in such as a hobbit.
If I build a battle robot and the robot goes to battle, is it a hero?
Are angels heroes?
“Normal life” is a relative term. I can think of few superheroes who are in a situation analogous to what was described by emr above with respect to Eliezer’s consort. There are certainly individual obstacles that superheroes face that normal people don’t, but the overall effect of these obstacles on the superhero’s life is limited, even if they loom large in an individual story.
The smartassed answer would be “decades of anime say yes”, but the real answer is that this is the kind of thing we could argue about for hours without making progress, because the word’s broad enough to encompass several mutually contradictory meanings.
This thread is happening in the context of a larger discussion about heroic responsibility, however, and I think “sidekick” here is most productively framed against that concept. Heroic responsibility means shouldering all the ills of the world; a sidekick’s responsibility is doing whatever the hero needs done so that they can more effectively get to the heroing. These approaches are rare in media; even Frodo and Samwise, the examples of the OP, only count in a kind of loose, metaphorical sense. But that doesn’t really matter, because we’re not doing media analysis here, we’re doing motivational psychology.
I’m not yet convinced that this is the healthiest or most productive way to conceptualize heroism or sidekickkery, at least for most people (you could insert a long-winded digression about Fate/stay night here, but it wouldn’t mean much to people that haven’t played the game). It beats arguing semantics, though, so let’s stick with it for now.
In which sense is Gandalf similar to a battle robot in the way that, say, Aragorn is not?
Besides, if you think of Maiar as battle robots, not only Gandalf is not a hero, but Sauron is not a villain either.