Updated on December 5, 2015
Bravery. What is it?
“Heroes aren’t fearless. Heroes are brave. Bravery requires fear. And fear is born of loving something enough that it’s loss would break you.” – Unknown. So, what is bravery? We use the word to describe to so many people’s (and sometimes pets) actions, and most of the time we do use it correctly, but those small amounts of time that we use it incorrectly causes us to blur up the description. So, what does it mean? The dictionary term of “brave” is “ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage”. Well, what is courage? Courage is “the ability to do something that frightens oneself”. So, the definition of being “brave” is that, even though you are afraid of whatever you are facing; whether it may be a giant hulking robot, a terrible illness, a gigantic army of evil-doers (because those totally exist), or even just facing the ordinary school bullies, you don’t let that fear affect you. You don’t allow your fear of these things to affect and control you. But, another part of being brave is that it’s selfless. It’s a selfless act done by someone in order to help others. You can’t be brave for yourself, that’s just the flight-or-fight response in you. But if you are doing this to protect the people (and animals) that you love, no matter if you know in the front part of your mind that this will defiantly lead to your death or of you being in severe pain, but you still do it without a second guess; that’s bravery. We can use this word to describe so many people; firemen, police officers, soldiers, superheroes, that cat you saw on youtube fighting off the evil dog to protect the kid (ok maybe not the last one). But, not everyone who falls under these categories is brave. Take superheroes, for example. Now, if you know me best, you know that I love Marvel more than DC. And one of the reasons why I love Marvel over DC is because Marvel has characters that fight for more than just “truth, justice, and the american way” (except for Captain America, he fights for that and other reasons.). And while both companies make brave superheroes, Marvel has what feels like way more brave superheroes than DC, and those reasons show up multiple times. (Warning, big spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the Avengers or Captain America, skip to the end mark) In Captain America the first movie, before he even got the “super soldier serum”, Steve Rogers threw himself onto a grenade to protect his fellow soldiers, even though they bullied him on the bootcamp. It wasn’t until six seconds of nothing happening that Steve found out that the grenade was a fake with the famous words “Is this a test?”, and is probably the reason why he became Captain America. Iron Man in the movie, “The Avengers”, learned near the end of their fight with aliens that SHIELD had launched a nuke at the city to solve the problem (cause that’s totally how to stop an alien invasion, John), and without a second thought latched himself onto the nuke, and drove it up through the portal and launched it at the alien space station. Even with Captain America telling him that this was a one way trip, the dude who said like, forty five minutes ago that he knew men worth ten of Tony Stark, Tony still did it (and thankfully lived).(Ok, your back? Good.) DC has some brave superheroes, sure, but it’s not the same. Superman is invincible to all weapons we have against him (except for kryptonite, but that came from another planet), what is he afraid of? Bravery comes from fear, as the quote said before, and he can’t be brave if he has nothing to fear! Same goes for Wonder Woman! She was almost a female version of Superman before Supergirl came, who I have the same rant about her too! And even Batman! Even though he’s human, he has trained himself so much since he was a kid so that he could be at prime physical and mental condition that he has reached a whole new level of human. I’m pretty sure that his feelings of revenge and justice has covered his bravery so much that the title of the animated series shouldn’t of been: “Batman; the Brave and the Bold” but “Batman; the Smart and the Brooding”. I’ve only been able to find two examples of extreme bravery from two heroes in this universe, and one time was in a video game! (That got bad reviews!) That one was Shazam, who by the end of the game “Injustice; Gods among us”, felt bad by helping Superman try to control the world, and tried to go against Superman, which is basically a death sentence in that universe, which is what happened! He got killed (very painfully as well, I might add) for trying to speak up against Superman’s crazy idea of destroying Metropolis and Gotham, and then wanted to go to the other dimension and destroy its earth. And the other one was the Barry Allen Flash in the “crisis of infinite earths” comic book series (If you haven’t heard of this than you have lived under a rock up until now). But, to put it simply, in order to protect all the multiple universes from getting destroyed, the Flash ran so fast to keep this big bomb from exploding that he literally ripped his atoms apart, which I may add, also sounds like a painful way to go. Fortunately, DC comics couldn’t keep their Silver Age superhero dead for long, and brought him back with science (unlike other heroes…). Anyways, I’m getting off topic. The point is, just because one person works for a job that people describe as brave, doesn’t mean that that person is brave. You probably won’t even notice if you or another is brave until they do something brave. So, may I ask; are you brave?
Well now that I am done rambling, I want to ask you the ordinary question; who in your life (fictional or not) is brave? Did I forget some superhero? Do you know of someone in real life that you can call as “Brave”? Tell me down in the comments! Bye!
Nice post. It is well thought out and reasoned.
But I might argue that you are talking about heroism, as opposed to bravery. Heroism has the selfless elements, that I’m not sure bravery requires.
The budding actor who overcomes stage-fright is brave. The rock climber who risks a bad fall for the joy of the challenge is brave. The boy who asks out the hot girl who is way out of his league is brave.
Maybe bravery is a strength, and heroism is using that strength in service of others?