Let me first start off with what I think a Hero is. A hero is a person who uses their own qualities to overcome something they had previously feared or thought they would never overcome. It can be from the simplest thing like getting over a talent that someone else possesses but you do not have or a complicated maze that has dragons in it and you have to go through it in five minutes.
Still though, the most popular knowledge of the word "hero(ine)" though is some one who is mythological or legendary who has great strength and/or ability.
The people today, including myself, all have nearly the same idea of what a heroic act or behavior is. We think a hero is someone who is courageous and stands up for what is right, and/or helps people in need; an example would be a 9/11 firefighter or Superman.
Women are heroes, though they are called a heroines and over the last couple of generations people are starting to believe that more and more; Oprah, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sally Ride, etc... The problem here is that there aren't many because we have it already locked in our minds that men are hero's due to our past. Take Mesopotamia for example, there were no female rulers because they weren't thought to be fit for war as men were. And when the war's came and the male rulers won them, everyone praised them and not once was there a thought of a woman who could lead an army; they were only looked at as a prize or someone to take care of a family. This thought kept women in this line until around the 1920's when there was a equal rights amendment for both men and women. Since it was so early, people(mainly men and still some women) had to get used to the idea of female heroines. It took many years until "heroine" started to get familiarized with people, and it still is today. Classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter, The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, or movies like Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings. Most of these books and movies took place in a time period where women weren't looked on as heroines and only as family keepers. And all of them have a main male hero. The authors weren't used to the fact that females were heroines then, only as either a family keeper or a damsel in distress. In these movies/books, not all of the male characters posed as "heroes" are actually heroes. Take Huckleberry Finn for example, he is a boy who fights for himself and ends up running away from his father because he doesn't want to deal with his pressures. He runs away and meets up with a runaway slave like Jim. Together they go through their adventures and Huckleberry is looked at as a hero because he helped Jim a lot, but in fact he isn't. People now-a-days say not to run away from you problems, and that is exactly what Finn did. So is he a hero? In one way yes, but overall no.
Heroes serve multiple purposes but overall, they make something once awful turn into something favorable. And as the world that we live in today, we do desperately need them. We need scientists, engineers, doctors, people who can help others not only with humans, but with animals and our one and only Earth. The way we live is with flaws to what we want to think isn't there but it is truly our nature. We have oil spills like the recent one in the Gulf of Mexico, overpopulation like in China or India, families without food, water, or shelter; it's all of this and more that make us desperate for heroes that we don't have enough of. Bertolt Brecht once said "Unhappy the land that needs heroes." and what he says is right. Places that need heroes, are places that aren't happy with they way things are, places that need help and can't find anything to support them. That's why "land that needs heroes" is true even to us. We, as a country and Earth, are not happy and are devastated; heroes like firefighters, doctors, are truly sad because they help the most unhappy people try to become happy in return for their unhappiness. Our world(or land) is truly, unfortunate.
