Achilles vs Superman

                      Achilles vs Superman

            Jayson C. Pamplona 

 

We’ve doubtless all heard the phrase ‘Achilles heel’. It is used to refer to an otherwise strong person’s one weak spot and references a story from Greek mythology concerning the great hero Achilles. Here’s a brief summary of the Achilles story:

The goddess Thetis conceived Achilles with Peleus, King of Phthia. To make her son invincible and invulnerable, Thetis dipped her young son in the River Styx, the river of the Underworld. The only part of Achilles’ body which remained vulnerable was his heel: because Thetis was holding the infant boy by that part of his body, it wasn’t submerged in those magic waters. So, Achilles was invulnerable in battle – but his heel remained vulnerable to attack. The first great epic poem in Western literature, Homer’s Iliad, concerns the Trojan War between the Greeks (although they’re not referred to as such) and the Trojans, following the abduction of Helen of Troy by the Trojan prince Paris. (‘Ilium’ is another name for Troy.)

But although the Iliad is, as Homer announces at the beginning of the poem, about ‘the wrath of Achilles’, the Greek hero doesn’t die in the Iliad, nor is his heel his one vulnerable spot. (Surprisingly, a number of the most famous incidents from the myth of the Trojan War don’t appear in Homer’s poem: there’s no Trojan Horse either.) Indeed, at one point in the Iliad, Achilles is wounded in the elbow:

Superman is possibly the most ubiquitous symbol of American popular culture there is. He is found in comic books, newspaper strips, graphic novels, radio and movie serials, television series, feature films, and a whole host of tchotchkes and other examples of “material culture.” But in the beginning, he was just an idea cooked up by two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They had a difficult time getting anyone to publish it, but when Superman saw the light of day in a new art form called the “comic book” in June 1938, he was an immediate success. From the beginning, Superman's stories have contained potentially religious or scriptural references or echoes, leading interpreters to suggest that there are religious/scriptural meanings or subtexts within “Superman.”1 Surprisingly some of these interpreters see these subtexts as obviously Jewish, while others understand them as clearly Christian. In what follows, I will show that cultural artifacts like “Superman” can be religiously multivalent, that is, different interpreters find various kinds of symbols and themes when examining the same aesthetic product. To do so, I will examine some possibly religious elements within the 1978 Richard Donner film Superman: The Movie to demonstrate how some readers/viewers can see Superman as another 

                       Comparison

 Modern-day heroes compared to ancient Greek heroes share many similarities. They are seen as extraordinary, “god-like”, brave, noble, powerful, and invincible; the list is endless. There is one defining factor that these heroes have in common, most of them have one fatal flaw. The Greek hero Achilles is a demi-god who is dipped in the River Styx by his mother. His mother accidentally holds him by his heel and his heel becomes his weakness. Achilles is the strongest and most heroic soldier in the Trojan War. The modern-day hero Superman, shares many similarities with the mythic hero, Achilles. Superman’s home planet is Krypton and he is rocketed to Earth moments before Krypton destructs. Superman has a vast amount of powers, but his fatal flaw is Kryptonite. Kryptonite drains him of his powers and if he is exposed to it for too long, it may kill him. Both heroes endure life-changing journeys that give them their heroic qualities.