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Don’t Be Elpenor: Some Ways of Failing the Hero with One Particularly Silly One

Don’t Be Elpenor: Some Ways of Failing the Hero with One Particularly Silly One

Last updated on: August 31, 2019 at 7:13 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Don’t Be Elpenor: Some Ways of Failing the Hero with One Particularly Silly One 2019-08-31T19:13:16-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Once I was asked how people managed to hang around Jesus and miss Him. Having grown up on fairy tales, a repository of sensible human psychology, this struck me as an odd question. People are always hanging around heroes and failing to notice that this is true. They are like the man in one of my dad’s churches that was always speaking on revival and praying for revival while failing to recognize that he was in a church in the middle of a revival.

Some Israelis died for the politically clueless son of Saul Ish-Bosheth when David, the man after God’s own heart and hero of the age, was seeking the throne. That a normally astute man like Abner chose so poorly for so long demonstrates how clueless a man can be.

There is almost an excuse of passing on a hero, since heroes by nature are in difficult times on a quest where success seems improbable. Most of us think we would head off with Gandalf and the dwarves like Bilbo, when in reality we would be out prudently inventing in the new mill being built by that thrifty hobbit Ted Sandyman. The practical man is too busy fishing to notice Peter and Andrew have gone off with some Rabbi somewhere. At least Abner opposed the hero and eventually recognized David’s superiority, while the practical man has history pass him by.

”What ever happened to that Peter Bar-Jonah?” he said to his neighbor in the reign of Nero.

A variation of this fool is an organist in a town near Bach who secretly suspects that the composer is overrated. One hopes nobody was that foolish. We do know, however, that General George Mcclellan worked for Abraham Lincoln and decided he had more talent than the man he thought a “gorilla.” General George, he with countless squandered opportunities, did not just despise the greatest American president, but ran to replace him.

Hundreds of thousands voted for him.

If some oppose the hero, seeing the flaws in his heroic heart, and others miss the hero due to a failure of vision, then the worst is the man who sees the hero, follows him, and then betrays what he knows to be good. Better not to have followed Jesus than to be Judas and sell the Son of God for money. So ugly is the betrayal of a hero by his friends, that Dante placed such men in the bottom of Hell damned to be eternally chewed up in Satan’s mouth. Satan himself is the being who saw the eternal Good and decided he could make improvements.

Most of us, however, are just good enough to avoid being Judas. Disney movies have done one good deed by sensitizing us to missing great moments with our age’s Mr. Lincoln. Nobody wants to miss the adventure. The result, however, might be to help us avoid some of the worst errors without preparing us for a pathetic mistake: going on the hero’s quest and being a lout. God help us from being just clued in enough to follow the hero, but too silly to do any good. Take the young man Eplenor, off on a hero’s journey with Odysseus. Having rescued his men from the witch Circe, Odysseus still lost one, not to nature, the gods, or Circe’s spells, but to Elpenor’s general goofiness:

So I spoke, and persuaded their heroes’ hearts. But not even from Circe’s house could I lead my men Unscathed. One of the crew, Elpenor, the youngest, [575] Not much of a warrior nor all that smart, Had gone off to sleep apart from his shipmates, Seeking the cool air on Circe’s roof Because he was heavy with wine. He heard the noise of his shipmates moving around [580] And sprang up suddenly, forgetting to go To the long ladder that led down from the roof. He fell headfirst, his neck snapped at the spine, And his soul went down to the house of Hades.*

Here we see four characteristics of the goof on adventure:

childishness, which need not be a matter of age
not much good at the major skill needed on the quest
not smart: less a lack of intelligence and more a lack of practical wisdom
some vice that is bad to have on an adventure.

Part of the reason we should know ourselves is knowing what we can do lest we end up Elpenor-ing in life. We should not follow a hero that we are not fit to follow! If folk are headed off to do medical help, then knowing no medicine is a reason not to go and try to do medicine. Elpenor was not a warrior, but went to the Trojan War.

Hard times expose flaws. Nobody wants to be in a crisis with a petulant baby, especially one in his fifties. Heroic quests require grownups, always a flaw of the Harry Potter series where children act like adults and the adults (often) act like children! Some vices are particularly bad on an adventure: the Nazis are not going to wait until you wake up from a binge, exploring Antarctica is not gentle with careless souls, and the manic pixie type need not apply for the crisis medical research team. What might be tolerated in normal circumstances is fatal in times or situations demanding heroism.

The romantic sort often longs for adventure, but Bilbo-sorts often make the best heroes. Romantics can lack practical wisdom, while if you can get a Bilbo to leave home, he is full of prudence and moderation. He does not lose his head!

We often live in interesting times. We shouldn’t ignore God’s heroes, attack them, or Elpenor** nearby. Let’s support God’s leaders, serve as we can, but not try to serve as we cannot!

——————————————

*Homer, Odyssey. Book IX line 570ff. (Fagles translation.)

** To “Elpenor” is to be like Elpenor.

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