Flaws, Heroes & Pillars of the Earth

Today's topic was to have been something along the lines of:

A flaw in a hero doesn’t bring the hero down : rather it demonstrates that flaws do not spoil a person. We are all flawed. We can be great despite them and with them and even if we never manage to rid ourselves of them. Give Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth a quick read and muse upon the intertwining of good and evil, including one character doing something dreadful without which much of the action would never have occurred; Philip supporting various political intrigues, including some which bring about the very situation that is to make his life and the good he is working so hard to create so very nearly impossible.

 

I have read a couple of headlines over the last week or so (but not yet taken the time to read the articles, sadly) suggesting that - gasp - flaws may have been discovered in the character and  / or life of Sir Edmund Hillary. See above.

 

Mervyn Thompson had some whopping great flaws. Yet he was one of the greatest creative types and one of the most sincerely loving people I have ever come across. Despite everything.

 

Stephen Fry had the whole running-off-with-his-family-friend's-credit-card thing, after years of underachieving (for him) at school and stealing lollies and money from the boys and masters.

 

Plenty of characters in Pillars of the Earth (to briefly get back to the point) could have thrown their hands up in horror at either their own terrible shortcomings or their latest disaster - yet when they didn't, when they kept putting one foot in front of the other, after the style of the Large Woman Walking With Shopping Bags near Totton, or Dori and Nemo (just keep swimming ...), there always came a moment where life rushed in again and they were once more in the flow.

 

Even when character A (not to spoil the story for those who haven't read it yet) learnt what character B had once done, s/he didn't go and tell on her/him, he/she had the good sense to keep it in the past and keep going.

 

Yet with all this sturdy fortitude and gumption in the face of sometimes the most appalling adversity, those who deliberately use foul means in the quest for fair ends are not approved. Those who make the best of whatever has already been, morally questionable or otherwise, have life turn out the best for. To turn a cliché round inelegantly.

 

But the phone beeps, so I must away in an attempt to complete the most essential of three-days-ago's petty work before the close of e'en. Does God exact day-labour, light denied? Only if the bed's been stripped but not yet made.

 

Still foolishly holding to the hope of future regularity,

Teufel