The best way to understand the character of a society is to examine the character of the men and women that the society chooses as its heroes or its role models Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim

According to the author’s claim,a society’s character can be best judged from the heroes and role models chosen by the society. In my view, it is the people who best represent the society.Heroes and role models are the persons whom the society looks up to gain inspiration and not vice versa.Hence I tend to disagree with this claim and in the below paragraphs I have given several reasons to support my opinion.

Firstly, a society is made up of large number of people ,each having different personality traits.Heroes and role models are part of the same society.We make someone our role model because we want to be like them.Their ideals,achievements etc inspire us to bring a change within us.For eg,Steve Jobs doesn’t represent the character of the society he lived in.It was his determination and skill that succeeded him.Today,we all tend to imbibe his personal traits within us to achieve success in our own personal lives.So to conclude heroes and roles models are part of the same society we live in and don’t represent us, but themselves.

Secondly,a society produces several heroes,each having its own dogmatic view.Also as people we don’t look up to everyone of them.We have our own personal favourites.For eg,Hitler is a hero to a large section of people and at the same he is disliked by many of us.Such difference in opinion suggest that heroes and role models do not represent the society best because of differing opinions created by them in the minds of the people.Finally,it’s the society as a whole who decides which path to follow and the Heroes have to abide with it.

Thirdly,a character of the society cannot be judged by the character of hero who represent it.To exemplify this,history reveals us that child marriage was so prevalent throughout India before independence until many revolutionaries fought against it to abolish it.These same revolutionaries are considered as hero today.The mindset of the people then differed from them.To summarize,society and hero are separate individuals,fighting against each other to serve for the good of the people they live in.

In sum,because of the reasons mentioned above,I completely disagree with the author’s claim that heroes and role models depict the character of the society.Its the people of the society who represent themselves and heroes are produce out of them to bring about a change in the people around them due to conflicting opinions or because of their own personal achievement which galvanizes us to achieve the same level.