English 10
Heroes
Read each scenario carefully and discuss with your group. For each, determine:
1)Whether or not the actions involved should be considered heroic.
2)Whether or not the person(s) involved should be considered a hero.
3)What your reasoning/rationale is for #1 and #2.
Be prepared to justify your answers when we regroup as a class.
1.Everything was quiet aboard AeroUS flight #111. The captain had turned off the seatbelt sign and Jack Allen was munching his peanuts and flipping through the in-flight magazine at 30,000 feet. A stewardess emerged from the cockpit looking very agitated. She asked if there were a doctor on the plane. Jack noticed that the plane was beginning to list and they were losing altitude. An experienced military jet pilot, he identified himself to the stewardess, who ushered him into the cockpit. The pilot had collapsed of a heart attack. Jack seated himself at the controls and landed the plane safely at their destination. No one besides the flight crew and the control tower ever found out about the incident.
2.A mother was horseback riding with her two children, ages six and ten, near her Idaho country home when their horses surprised a mountain lion. One of the horses shied, throwing the youngest child, a six-year-old boy, to the ground. The mountain lion sprang on the boy and began to maul him. Without thinking, the mother leaped from her horse and managed to pull the animal off the boy. The lion turned on her and mauled her to death. The six year old survived the attack, thanks in part to his brother, who rode away during the attack and brought help.
3.A noted professional football star almost ruined his career because of his addiction to alcohol and drugs. He sought help for his addiction, went into treatment, and now travels the country in the off-season, speaking to schoolchildren about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.
What if the schools had to pay him for his appearance?
What if he donated the money to charity?
What if he didn’t take money, but was speaking to fulfill his community
service hours?
4. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a patrol of Nazi soldiers was assigned to search all houses on a street in the Jewish ghetto and to kill any people they found hiding in the houses after all Jews had been ordered to evacuate. Two families had constructed a secret room in the wall that joined their two houses, and went there to hide when they heard the patrol working its way down the street. There were five adults and five children in hiding, including a mother with a three-month-old infant. The infant was hungry and frightened and would not stop crying. The mother was petrified that the child would give away their location in the wall. She had repeatedly tried and failed to soothe the child, but when the patrol broke down the front door of the house the child only cried louder at the noise. The mother smothered her child, suffocating him to death in order to protect the secrecy of their group.
5.When touring Southeast Asia, Annabelle stopped in a quiet village to take pictures of some of the locals to send home to her parents in Nebraska. She heard a great deal of commotion coming from some fields just beyond the village, so she went to check it out. A group of women had been working in the fields, but now they were screaming and fussing at a toddler who had wandered away, chasing after a goat. Annabelle couldn’t understand what they were saying, but she guessed that they were afraid the little boy would wander off and get lost. She was a great deal closer to the boy than the women were, so she thought she’d do her good deed for the day and bring the boy back to his mother. Then she was hoping to take their picture, possibly even with the goat. She ran after the boy, grabbed his hand, and led him back to the women in the field. No sooner had she reached the group of hysterical women than they all heard a huge explosion. The goat had tripped one of the many land mines still hidden in the field.
6.Matt was walking home late one night after a particularly wild party. He was too drunk to drive, and the subways had stopped running hours ago, so he walked home through the quiet city streets. As he rounded the corner, he spotted a four-story apartment building engulfed in flames. Most of the residents had gotten out safely, but a young woman was screaming that her baby was still in the building. Matt ran in the building, found the child, and brought him out to safety. Then he passed out cold.
What if there was no screaming mother, but Matt was the first to discover the fire? He ran into the building, banged on all the doors, woke the residents, and helped them out of the building.
What if he hadn’t run in, but had run to a phone and called 911?
What if he’d been sober, but he’d been walking a girl home that he really wanted to impress?
7. The Olympic track and field men’s 400M race was won by American track star David Strickland, who trains full time at a Nike facility outside Chicago. After the Olympics, he expects to receive an estimated $7 million from endorsements alone. The week after the race, Strickland made appearances on “The Tonight Show,” “Late Night with David Letterman,” and “Live with Regis and Kelly,” where he mentioned that Spike Lee was interested in making a movie with him. The bronze medal in the same event was won by an African man from a tiny village in Zimbabwe. After the Olympics, he returned home to his people, most of whom he had never been more than 100 miles the village where they were born. He expects to return to his former, traditional way of life, tending livestock with his family.