High Fantasy Essay
...e. The typical hero is a big muscular male with great strength who walks around with a sword wearing virtually nothing. That isn’t always true. R.A. Salvatore, author of the Spearwielders Tale Trilogy, made the hero as a normal middle class working man. He stepped into the woods behind his house and found a whole different world. He became the hero when he was in the right place at the right time and ended up defeating a dragon. But in reality, not all heroes have to do anything heroic other than accomplish some sort of quest. In “Friend Island” the hero or actually heroine is a woman trying to get off of an island. In the end an opportunity to accomplish this quest presents itself and she takes it and completes her quest. She didn’t really do anything that made her a heroine in our reality. She didn’t battle some big monster or rescue someone. She did, in a certain way, time and survival. She had to survive and hold on long enough to find a way off the island. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Riddles in the Dark” the hero, in my opinion, can be one of two things. It can either be the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, or the ring. Now, Bilbo could be the hero for the sake of accomplishing a quest to get out of the cave he was lost in by using a creature that in all reality was an extremely old Hobbit by defeating him in a riddle challenge. But I also see the hero as the ring because if not for the ring, Bilbo would have been lost. When asking riddles back and forth Bilbo couldn’t think of a riddle right away. He felt the ring, which he found in the middle of a cave, in his pocket. He asked the creature, Gollum, what was in his pocket. This question stumped Gollum and Bilbo won the riddle contest. Not only did the ring save him from being eaten there, but when worn made him invisible so he could escape by following Gollum out of the cave without Gollum’s knowledge of it. So in all reality, I see the ring, even though it is an inanimate object, as the hero as well as Bilbo. It is all about how you look at it. “The Grey Wolf”, written by George MacDonald the hero is nothing more than a young English student. This student, while caught in a storm, found safe shelter in a cave. While in this cave, a young woman walks in an offers him shelter at her mothers place. He gladly accepts and returns to her home with her. While there her mother offers food and a bed. In the night, he wakes up to a wolf attacking him. He choked out the wolf and it took off into the night. In the morning, during breakfast, the young man finds out that the young woman has five bruises on her neck. The young man knew right away who the woman was. When a scuffle between the young woman and her mother breaks out, the young ...