Last year in a world literature text we use, today’s graduates read that “Tales of the hero and the heroic quest occur in nearly every world culture. If we look closely at hero tales from all over the world and compare them, we find what the Irish novelist James Joyce and the American mythologist Joseph Campbell called the monomyth—literally ‘the one story.’”[1] In all of our literature classes, we encounter these heroes regularly. They are on a “journey…in search of something of value.”
It is the “one story” because the hero’s quest resonates with all of us; we see in it our own life’s journey. Our greatest hopes reside within it. As we engage the world, we want our lives to be both meaningful and triumphant. Commencements are filled with thoughts reflective of the graduates’ highest aspirations as we all celebrate their move from childhood achievement into adult life. All of the graduates here today, indeed, all people everywhere, are looking to be heroes in their own stories.
Sometimes in literature the hero enjoys a grand triumph. Our class today can remember encounters with them. In The Aeneid, for example, the hero Aeneas leads his fellow Trojans from the ashes of a vanquished city to found the majestic Roman Empire. Aeneas is larger than life, a demi-god, who performs fantastic deeds, saves an entire race, and creates a nation.
But…his triumph is never guaranteed. Aeneas must overcome not just enemies, but an intense inner conflict in order to lead his people.
Another hero the seniors remember is John Proctor in The Crucible, who tries to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation, bravely risking death when he will not accede to a false confession of witchcraft. Similarly, Amir in The Kite Runner, seeks the personal triumph of redemption, and finds “a way to be good again” after betraying a friend.
Clearly, then, whoever these heroes may be, in whatever guise, they have flaws and face challenges; were it not so, we could certainly not relate to them, aware as we are of our own imperfections, our own obstacles. However exciting the adventure, they, and we, do not achieve the objectives of our quests easily.
But the good news is that we do not have to go it alone. Just as "mythic heroes are often aided on their quests by loyal friends”[2] or some other benefactors, we ordinary folks are too.
Initially, all of us have gotten assists from parents and guardians in the years of our innocence. In your earliest days, graduates, they prepared you for your school years, and anticipated your journey with both pride and poignancy. American actor and poet Victor Buono gives voice to these mixed emotions in the persona of a mother anticipating her daughter’s first day of school, the precursor and parallel to the ceremony we mark today:
Dear World [he begins]:
I bequeath to you today one little girl...in a crispy dress...with two brown eyes...and a happy laugh that ripples all day long… and a flash of light brown hair that bounces in the sun when she runs.
I trust you'll treat her well.
She's slipping out of the backyard of my heart this morning...and skipping off down the street to her first day of school. And never again will she be completely mine.
Now…she'll learn to tune her ears for the sounds of school-bells...and deadlines...and she'll learn to giggle...and gossip....
No longer will she have time….to pop out of bed with the dawn and kiss lilac blooms in the morning dew. No, now the magic of books and learning will replace the magic of her blocks and dolls. And now she'll find new heroes.
For five full years now I've been her sage… and mother and friend. Now she'll learn to share her worship with her teachers...which is only right. But no longer will I be the smartest woman in the whole world….
She'll learn in time that proper young ladies do not… kiss dogs...or keep frogs in pickle jars in bedrooms....
Today she'll learn for the first time that all who smile at her are not her friends. And I'll stand on the front porch and watch her start out on the long, lonely journey to becoming a woman.
So, world, I bequeath to you today one little girl...in a crispy dress...with two brown eyes...and a flash of light brown hair that bounces in the sunlight when she runs.
I trust you'll treat her well.
Of course, we mothers and fathers feel keenly the irony of that refrain. The world will give our sons and daughters dragons and demons to conquer. But then, a world without challenges would be stagnant and colorless, and there would be no triumph in an inevitable achievement.
In fact, it is no secret that personal growth happens through struggle and in attempting things we’re afraid we can’t do. It is precisely because the hero has to be brave, to persevere, and even to suffer that we admire him.
But in that the hero’s story, the “one story,” is ours as well, there is good news for you also, graduates.
In the 2008 presidential campaign cycle, CNN sponsored interactive debates of the candidates with voters, who asked the hopefuls questions via Skype. Whether they were Democratic or Republican contestants I honestly can’t recall, but I do remember one question posed to them. “Who has had the most profound influence on your life?” one viewer queried of all the candidates in the debate. In a field of many, they all had the same answer. Even the most hard-edged politician in the pack melted into a warm, intimate tale about a cherished teacher.
Now I have a vested interest in singing the praises of teachers, but I tell this story for a larger purpose. Graduates, as your parents began this good work, someone, or more likely, many someones, here at the South Shore Charter Public School, has given you everything you need to make this journey.
Most of us know the film version of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy makes a journey to a land of fantasy, where the good witch Glinda, her benefactor, gives Dorothy ruby slippers. The girl is in awe of this fantastic land, but she is lost, and all she wants to do is go home. When the great wizard who promises to help her turns out to be a fraud, Glinda appears and tells Dorothy, “You don't need to be helped any longer. You've always had the power to go back to Kansas.” Dorothy has worn the ruby slippers throughout her quest journey, and, in these shoes, she has come through many trials and triumphed over a formidable adversary. That is, she has had everything she needed to take this trip. When she clicks her heels together, home becomes a different place, a place she sees through the new prism of knowledge earned. Dorothy gains wisdom and uncovers her own potency, as the quest was never about getting back to Kansas; it was always about a journey of self-discovery.
As you, graduates, embark on your heroes’ journeys-- metaphorical and real-- you too will find yourselves in awe of the world-- beyond our community here-- often exhilarated, sometimes a little lost. It is an exquisitely prodigious endeavor to strike out on one’s own. Revel in the excitement of it, and, in those uncertain moments, also remember that someone here has nurtured you, inspired you, and believed in you. Along with your family’s love, some teacher or mentor has given you ruby slippers, and you have everything you need to make this journey.
Those of you who know Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations recall that as Pip sets off for London, he wants to hang back and return to the security of home, but one step forward leads to another, and he reflects, “We changed [coaches] again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”
Class of 2011, fasten tightly the ruby slippers that will guide your steps, and then look up and follow your most excellent of dreams, because in addition to the gifts of others, you have all inherited as your birthright the human yearning and potential to follow the hero’s path. As the ancient poet Ovid says in the Metamorphoses, humankind was “moulded, mixed with water, in likeness of the gods that govern the world—and while the other creatures on all fours look downwards, man was made to hold his head erect in majesty and see the sky, and raise his eyes to the bright stars above.”[3]
Congratulations, graduates, from me, “for you, a thousand times over.”
[1] World Literature (Boston: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2001) 26.
[2] 27.
[3]Ovid, Metamorphoses l. 82ff, trans. Melville, quoted in www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanPrometheus.html.
