There are heroes for every age.
Achilles belongs to Homer, Don Quixote to Cervantes, and Julien Sorel to Stendhal. Each embodies the aspirations of his civilization, however flawed or ironic those aspirations may be. The hero tells us what a culture admires, what it fears, and what it believes a human life might become.
What, then, is the hero of our own age?
This question lies at the heart of the distance separating Julien Sorel, the ambitious young protagonist of The Red and the Black, from Bertrand Mercer, the investment advisor at the center of Homo Eroica. Both men hunger for greatness. Yet one inhabits a world in which greatness remains imaginable, while the other lives in a civilization that scarcely remembers what greatness means.
Julien Sorel is born too low. Bertrand Mercer is born too late. The distinction is everything.
Although Napoleon has long since fallen, his shadow dominates Stendhal's novel. Julien never met the Emperor, yet Napoleon remains proof that history once permitted extraordinary men to reshape the world. Greatness is therefore not an abstraction but a recent memory. Julien's tragedy is that society refuses him entry into that world. He possesses enormous ambition but lacks the birth, wealth, and connections that Restoration France demands. His struggle is against society.
Bertrand's struggle is stranger. Society places remarkably few obstacles before him. He enjoys education, prosperity, professional success, and every material comfort that previous generations could scarcely imagine. Yet he experiences this abundance not as liberation but as confinement. The modern world dazzles him. Glass towers rise into the clouds. Capital flows effortlessly across continents. Restaurants overflow with luxury. Information travels instantaneously. Every inconvenience yields to technology.
Yet beneath the glitter Bertrand perceives an extraordinary emptiness. His civilization rewards intelligence, efficiency, and ambition, but offers almost no opportunity for greatness. Careers have replaced vocations. Management has replaced command. Institutions prize predictability over courage, procedure over judgment. The ancient virtues survive largely as metaphors in corporate mission statements.
History no longer demands heroes. This is not because the modern world lacks danger. It is because danger has become increasingly impersonal. The Second World War confronted millions with terrible moral choices. Soldiers crossed beaches under machine-gun fire. Resistance fighters accepted torture. Ordinary citizens concealed strangers at the risk of execution. Whatever one thinks of war, it presented men and women with unmistakable opportunities for courage, sacrifice, and duty.
Bertrand inherits the peace they secured. He also inherits a civilization in which such virtues possess few natural outlets. His tragedy is therefore not that he lacks heroic ambition. It is that history has withdrawn the arena in which heroism might reveal itself. Unable to discover a worthy battlefield, Bertrand invents substitutes. Financial speculation acquires the emotional intensity once reserved for campaigns. Erotic conquest promises transcendence but delivers only repetition. Reinvention masquerades as transformation. Each new pursuit carries the hope that somewhere beneath ordinary existence lies the greatness he cannot quite define.
Every attempt ends in disappointment because none addresses the real hunger. Bertrand does not desire success. He desires significance. That distinction separates him from the conventional modern protagonist. He is not merely dissatisfied with his career or trapped in suburban boredom. He suffers from something far older: the conviction that life ought to demand more than comfort.
Perhaps this explains why he often appears comic. The spectacle of an investment advisor yearning for heroic greatness possesses an undeniable absurdity. Achilles in a tailored suit. Odysseus navigating compliance regulations. Don Quixote armed with market reports.
Yet the comedy conceals something profoundly serious. Bertrand is ridiculous precisely because his aspirations belong to another age. Stendhal's irony exposes the vanity of youthful ambition. Homo Eroica asks a different question altogether. What becomes of a man born with heroic instincts after civilization has abolished the heroic vocation? The question extends beyond literature.
Modern society excels at producing specialists, managers, experts, and entrepreneurs. It rewards innovation, efficiency, and adaptability. These are genuine achievements, yet they are not synonymous with greatness. A civilization may become extraordinarily competent while quietly forgetting how to admire courage for its own sake.
Perhaps this is why novels like The Red and the Black continue to speak to modern readers. Julien Sorel reminds us of a world in which ambition reached toward glory rather than comfort. Bertrand Mercer, by contrast, reminds us what remains after that world has disappeared.
Neither man succeeds. Julien destroys himself pursuing greatness. Bertrand destroys himself searching for a place where greatness might still be possible. The distance between them measures more than two centuries of literary history. It measures the transformation of Western civilization itself.
Further Reading
Readers interested in the evolution of the modern hero may also enjoy Homo Eroica by Robert Bon Serra, published by Lamplighter Press.
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