Behind Every Great Man, There's an Even Greater Woman That Turns Him Into an Idiot!!

Let's face it guys, we can be great, but as soon as a woman gets involved we are the most idiotic beings in the planet. It is the same for our friend D'Artagnan, who is getting himself and his musketeer friends because of his love for Madame Bonacieux, a married woman. She is a close friend of the Queen and wants to help her friend cover up her affair with the Duke of Buckingham.

The Queen gave the Duke of Buckingham a diamond brooch that was given to her by the King. The Cardinal, who knows of such affair and the gift given to the Duke, suggests to the King that he asks the Queen to wear the brooch to the ball. So, she needs someone to go to England and retrieve the brooch from the Duke. Madame Bonacieux decides to do such chore, but after a fiery conversation with her husband, who has a pact with the Cardinal, he does not allow her to go to England.

D'Artagnan our romantic yet heroic fool, endangers himself, and his friends, in order to "show off" to his loved one, when Madame Bonacieux asks him what he overheard from the conversation she had with her husband, he answers, "A thousand things. Fist of all, that your husband is a simpleton, fortunately; then, that you are much embarrassed- of which I am very glad, as it will allow me to offer my services, and God knows that I am ready to throw myself into the fire for you; lastly, that the Queen stands in need of a brave, intelligent, and devoted man to make a journey to London for her. I have at least two out of the three qualities necessary, and here I am!"(186) He is willing to protect the Queen's betrayal to the King, the man to whom he has so much loyalty, and risk being arrested or killed by the Cardinal's men, who are rivals to the king's musketeers, since it is the Cardinal's idea to keep the Queen's affiliates away from England.

"All for one, one for all"(101) is their motto, and also the reason why the musketeers agree to help D'Artagnan in his quest. They end up all getting seriously injured on their way to England by the Cardinal's men, only D'Artagnan gets to England safely. He sacrificed his friends to show off his love to Madame Bonacieux.

A woman can make a man do anything she wants, whether the man is a hero or not. Love can be one of the greatest flaws a hero can attain but it can also be a great catalyst for his heroism. In D'Artagnan's case, it is a flaw because he endangers his friend's lives and his own for it.

Hero-Like Behavior!!

D'Artagnan has just left his little country side village of Gascony in order to pursue his dream of becoming a musketeer and on his way to Paris he already gets into trouble. D'Artagnan has a very impulsive temper, which leads him to a brawl in the city of Meung on his way to Paris when a man laughs at his ridiculously old horse. Even after he reaches Paris, D'Artagnan finds trouble with the "three inseparables", Athos, Porthos and Aramis, through clumsy, accidental acts. When they show up to duel D'Artagnan, they realize that he is a great person. But even after such bonding event between our four heroes, they get into two more brawls with the cardinal's men, the king's biggest rival.

The three musketeers themselves also have some un-heroic-like behavior. The only flaw presented by Athos is his support of the behavior of his companions, otherwise, Athos is the most hero-like character of this band of heroes. Aramis dreams of becoming a priest, but yet he kills many people and when D'Artagnan asks how he should spend his money, his first answer is to tell him to get a woman. That is definately not how a priest should act. Porthos is the less likely hero of the four. He is loud and egocentric, and one should say, somewhat crazy for food and women.

But, all four of them has something that the author uses to make them the heroes they are. They are brave, loyal to their beliefs and to the people they love and care about, and also honest.

So, the question I pose is: Do the good characteristics of a person cast a shadow over his/her flaws when determing how great a person he/she is, or even if he/she is a hero/heroine?

How you write is how you think!!!

Thomas Brussig chose to the write the novel Heroes like us as an interview. Usually the way authors present their ideas are reflected directly through the way the book is written. Heroes like us is set up as an interview, each chapter is a tape that has been recorded by the voice of Klaus, the main character, and the interviewer, Mr. Kieltstein, is never heard. The reason why the author chose to write the book in this manner is becauce he wanted to make sure everyone knows Klaus is actually exposing something about the Stasi, and that he could be endangered by such exposure. Also, the fact that only Klaus' voice is heard throughout the interview is mostly because he wants to emphasize the fact that the whole story is biased and it is all seen through Klaus point of view, and the interviewer does not have a say in any of the story. So, Klaus could be lying or exhagerating, which is a point the author wants to get across in the story without telling the audience directly.

Mommy!! Daddy!! You made me an egocentric!!!

In the book "Heroes like us" by Thomas Brussig, Klaus Uhltzscht (try to pronounce that!) opens up everything about how the Stasi, the German secret services, and all of their "dirt" to Mr. Kitzelstein, a correspondent of the New York times. He doesn't only say many of the secrets of the Stasi but he also says that it is his fault that the Berlin wall came down, ending communism in East Germany. He says that such event was caused by him in an accident, which also shortened the size of his genital.

Klaus is a very egocentric man. His tone, as he speaks to Mr. Kitzelstein, seems as if Klaus is superior to him, which brings up the question, "Is he telling the truth or is he exaggerating things?". Before that question can be analyzed, the book must be read to a further extent.

There's another question that must be analyzed, "What made his ego so large?". His mother is a "hygiene goddess", as Klaus likes to call her, who always expected perfection from her son. For example, Klaus urinates in a sitting position, with the toilet seat up, without touching the borders of the toilet because he is disgusted to touch the toilet and afraid he might miss and urinate where he shouldn't. This is because of all the pressure his mother put on him throughout his life to be a perfect, clean person.

There's also his father, who worked for the more "undercover" Stasi, the one with all the dirt. He never praised his son's achievements and always treated him as if he was nothing. This behavior that Klaus' father practiced lead to Klaus always trying to be better in order to impress his father, until he started to believe that his father actually envied him.

With his parents overprotection he also failed to have any relationships with the other people. This type of protection and his pursue to always be better lead him to think that he was better than anyone else, since he didn't really know how good others were. He believes that the Berlin wall fell because of him because he believes that he is the only one good enough to have caused such event. Also, he reveals the secrets of the Stasi because he also thought to be better than them, and that there is nothing they could do to him.