The Heroic in Literature and in Living

Abstract

Picture a middle aged man slumped in a wheel chair, unable to move, unable to speak except through a mechanical voice. It is difficult for him even to swallow his own saliva. And he is a hero, married to a heroine. His name is Stephen Hawking, and he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the same disease that killed Lou Gehrig. This disease usually kills in two or three years, but in Stephen Hawking it has moved unexpectedly and unusually slowly. After the diagnosis of the life-threatening disease, he fell apart; but then the disease did not progress and he met and married his wife, Jane, fathered three sons, and has become the most exciting physicist since Einstein. His wife has kept him in the world, preventing him from being isolated by his illness, traveling with him, giving dinner parties, refusing to let his disease deny him the stimulation and challenge of fellow human beings. He is a hero because he has overcome fearful odds, because his mind is unfettered as it roves the universe, seeking for the Grand Unified Theory which will put together Einstein's theories of relativity with the discoveries of particle physics. He is a hero because he can still laugh, see the humor in life, and announce, My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is and why it exists at all. The heroic personality always has unusual odds to overcome, and ultimately enlarges our own understanding of the extraordinary universe in which we live. As Hawking says, We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to observe it. For our universe is made in such a way that it has taken a great number of seeming coincidences to produce a potential habitat for human life. For instance, if our gravity were even a fraction less than it is, all stars would be red dwarves and human life would be impossible; if it were a fraction greater, all stars would be blue giants and human life would be equally impossible. So, in a sense, Creation has done the heroically impossible in giving us a universe which is capable of producing strong young suns with planetary systems, and an atmosphere that is precisely right for the arrival of human beings who grow, question, wonder, search, tell stories. I had a lot of heroes and heroines when I was a child, and I believe