HEROISM AND QUASI-HEROISM: MAKING THE STORY AND TAKING THE GLORY (Published)
Art mirrors the society and reports, directly or indirectly, the happenings in it. Certain personalities in the society have been recognised in the characters of our works of art, especially in literatures like play texts, novels, movie, TV and radio scripts. While some of these characters have been called by certain names like hero, protagonist, antagonist, a certain group has been left unrecognised. Yet, these unrecognised personalities abound in every society and they are constant characters in all art works. This paper is a call to recognise the doomed innocent, the naïve character who symbolises lack of understanding of the situation at hand. The character who, out of innocence, heads straight into danger and suffers for a crime he did not commit. This paper finds a common ground between the near faultless hero of the classic period and the transformed hero of the contemporary era. These hitherto unrecognised characters, identified here as quasi-heroes, are explored in all works of art. Using Emeka Nwabueze’s Spokesman for the Oracle and Sam Ukala’s Break A Boil, this paper will not only mirror the society, but will also throw more light on these characters whose existence has, for so long, been in the shadows of the heroes
Keywords: Glory, Heroism, Quasi-Heroism, Story