Hubris

hubris--a display of pride or entitlement so vast in nature that it overrides an individual's more sensible behavior; the resident sense within a character of being right to the point where the character's behavior intentionally or unintentionally humiliates other characters; a near evangelical course of behavior from a character in service of a belief and/or goal.

Hubris drives many characters in the dramatic and literary arts, leading the reader to suspect that eventually such a hubris-driven character will have to pay a huge price. Was Achilles being hubristic in The Iliad, particularly after he had slain Hector in battle, then paraded his corpse about? Was King Creon showing hubris when he exacted his directive against his niece in Antigone? Was Ahab showing hubris when he gambled and lost against the whale? Was Dr. Frankenstein showing hubris when he believed he could take on Nature by creating life?

What began as indifference to or a disrespect for the Gods and Fates (who knew a thing or two about retribution) became as democratized as other aspects of social and moral behavior to mere humans who became impressed by their own self-interest to the point of believing it is their due to get what they want. Consider Charles Foster Kane as a modern force of hubris, forcing his wishes upon those near him and extending to individuals he might never meet. Thus consider all these larger-than-life characters made in part what they are because of a complete lack of empathy.

A guiding definition of a hubris-driven story is: How the mighty are fallen, the powerful being led to humiliation of their own, pushed along the road by hubris. Bringing the nature of hubris into tighter contemporary context, we examine how anyone of an overarching position of pride is brought down into disgrace and humiliation or, as Jane Austen did with the representational characters of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, the characters undergo an acceptable shift toward empathy. Although, since Austen is known for her keen wit and satire, perhaps she is saying that the payment for the positions of pridefulness and prejudice is--marriage.

Under most literary circumstances, there is some payment necessary for having lived at the level of hubris.

The Hard-luck Story

All stories have some kind of end-game goal, some intended effect on the hearer/reader. Is it laughter? Perhaps the author's intent is education, or irony, or reversal. Perhaps the narrative is offered in self-defense, or the adjunct of self-defense, excuse. As long as we're dwelling on the conditional perhaps, might be the intent of a story is to make the teller sound modest--moi?--or resourceful.

Surely one of the more plentiful among dramatic narratives is the hard-luck story or its close relative, the sob story. The purpose is to evoke or elicit sympathy for the teller, both in the nature of troubles piled on and in the way the load is borne by the forces of Nature and natural disaster.

You could say--and probably will, once you think about it--that The Book of Job is the classic hard-luck story, not only because of the trials visited upon Job but as well because of the capricious nature of the way the visitation was set in motion. Job happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when those polar representations of The Cosmic Forces got into a bragging and betting mood.

In more modern times, you could argue that an archetypal hard-luck story is found in a heavy contributor to Republican politics, being given a chance to go hunting with the Vice President of the United States. We all know how that turned out. That poor man will be known throughout history as the man who went bird hunting with the Veep. In Texas, where the incident took place, Republican school children will be allowed to stay home from school on the anniversary of that day, and boys with aggressive cases of facial zits will be able to say, "I went dove hunting with Dick Cheyney."


You could also, if you wanted, put the majority of Americans of voting age as players in a hard-luck story because it is our hard luck to have at the helm of the ship of state a man more like Captain Ahab than the President of the United States, although there are those who would disagree with my literary analogy, reminding me of Mary Shelley's archetypal Frankensteinas the more appropriate fit. Dr. Frankenstein represents the force behind the Vice President of the United States, a man who once was more benign than he now is, having created a monster who has attached some seven hundred fifty signing statements to bills acted into law by the Congress. Mrs. Shelley's point was a moral one, in which hubris could create a monster.

It's our hard luck story that the President of the United States, with graduate work in hubris, is in over his head and the best we can think to do in the name of conventional wisdom is to wait his term of office out.

We will nationally remain at the wrong end of a hard-luck story as long as we continue to accept our status as victim.