"Die a Hero"

Comic book heroes are sometimes the source of profound dialogs.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” – Spiderman

 

Another such line is from the Batman movie by Christopher Nolan:

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Nolan says that line haunts him for multiple reasons. One, he didn’t come up with the line; his brother did. Two, at the time, he didn’t even appreciate it!

“I was like ‘Alright, I’ll keep it in there, but I don’t really know what it means. Is that really a thing?’”

Three, Nolan finds it applicable to his more recent smash hit, Oppenheimer:

“In [Oppenheimer] it’s absolutely that. Build them up, tear them down. It’s how we treat people.”

As Nolan says, if Oppenheimer had to be summarized in one line, it would be the “Die a hero” line.

 

In recent times, I realized that the line is even more profound if taken beyond its literal meaning. Here’s what I mean. “Die a hero” doesn’t refer to just the physical death of the individual in question.

 

Take Anne Frank, she of the diary by a young-Jew-girl-from-Nazi-era fame. Recently, some people who were outraged by the prolonged Israeli assault on Palestine and the destruction and killing it has unleashed painted the hands of an Anne Frank statue red. If the person is remembered as a hero beyond his/her death, whether in memory or history books or public imagination, the line still applies. Die a hero.

 

Or take Bangladesh. When still a part of Pakistan, a political leader from East Pakistan (as it was then called) named Mujibur Rahman did the unimaginable – he won the Pakistani national election. The Punjabi West Pakistan (modern day Pakistan) could not allow some Bengali to rule the country, setting off a chain of events that resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. Rahman, who led that call for independence then, became a national hero. Decades later, his daughter Sheikh Hasina became an autocrat who was ultimately overthrown and forced to flee. The furious mobs have brought down the iconic statue of Rahman in Dhaka. His daughter had always milked her relationship to the national hero, and so now he was vilified by relationship. Die a hero.

 

You could say the same for the vilification of Nehru in recent times. Not due to his actions and choices (which were understandable and even necessary when he made them, and besides, who in governance doesn’t make mistakes?), but because he is the glorification and legitimizing link to his current day descendants. Die a hero.