Week 7: Essay- Is Brer Rabbit Heroic?

Last week, I read about Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King, and it lead me to thinking about what makes character's heroic. I concluded that heroes were heroes not because of their strength or pwer or abilities, but for their willingness to sacrifice their own good for the greater good. So, when I was reading Brer Rabbit, I wondered if he was a hero?

While, I do think that we are supposed to identify with Brer Rabbit as the main character, I do not believe that Brer Rabbit is a hero in the strictest sense. Brer Rabbit fails to possess one of the key traits that belongs to a hero. He is not particularly strong or powerful. However,  he is very clever and extremely likable. If he was to be a hero, he would be most comparable to the Greek hero, Odysseus. Odysseus was never as strong, or as skilled in combat as other Greek heroes, like Ajax or Achilles. He was, though, the cleverest of all of them. Odysseus is still remembered as a hero though, so it seems that a hero doesn't necessarily need to possess raw strength or power. So I would say that Brer Rabbit possesses the cleverness that might make him a hero, but he does he use that cleverness in a way that would make him heroic?

Brer Rabbit from London Charivari, source: Wikipedia

Odysseus uses his cleverness to effectively win the war for the Greeks by creating the Trojan Horse. Brer Rabbit, though, never uses his cleverness is any cause so big. He is uses his ingenuity to save his own skin, time and time again. If Brer Rabbit were to use his brain-power to save the townspeople from Brer Wolf or Brer Fox, then I would definitely call him a hero. However, he never does anything for the greater good. So, I would call him a trickster, not a hero.