Well, okay, he can think about the reward, but that’s not why he does it. He does what’s right not just if there’s no reward, but even if it’s costly, because it’s right.
Mind you, a hero doesn’t have to be heroic all the time; he can let little things go. He doesn’t have to intend to be heroic at all. He doesn’t have to succeed at being heroic. But he has to try to do what’s right, regardless of the cost to himself. (No risk, no heroism—anyone can do what’s right when it’s free and easy.)
Meredith Grey is the protagonist of Grey’s Anatomy—her name’s right there in the title, announcing this fact—but you know, if you look at the show for any length of time, it becomes clear that she’s not much of a hero. Oh, her heart’s generally in the right place, she doesn’t really try to hurt anyone, she tries to help when she can, she does take care of her mother until the latter’s death, but a hero? No.
Right from the start, in the very first episode, she fails at the most elementary sorts of heroism. She and Christina make an agreement that if they can jointly come up with the diagnosis for a patient, Christina will get to scrub in on any surgery that results—but when it comes down to it, and Dr. Shepherd chooses Meredith for the operation, she doesn’t protest, doesn’t say that Christina should go.
Clearly, saying that Christina should get it is the right thing to do—and Meredith doesn’t do it.
Eventually she speaks up, but Dr. Shepherd overrules her, and she doesn’t insist. She accepts his reasoning, and breaks her promise. In the end, it’s Meredith, and not Christina, who assists in the O.R.
That’s just one example; throughout the series, Meredith falls short of what she wants to be, what she ought to be. She hides the truth, she lets down her friends, she drinks to excess, she goes to bed with men when she knows she shouldn’t. Yes, she also saves lives, tries to be a loyal friend, tries to do what’s right, but all in all, she’s clearly not a hero. The protagonist, yes; the hero, no.
So if it’s not the title character, not the female lead, is there a hero on Grey’s Anatomy?
Well, it certainly isn’t Derek Shepherd, who doesn’t tell Meredith that he’s married until his wife shows up, who favors his playmate over the other interns until Dr. Bailey calls him on it, and who generally behaves in self-centered, inconsiderate fashion when he’s not actually practicing medicine. He’s a brilliant doctor, sure, we accept that, and if I needed brain surgery I’d be happy to have him do it, but otherwise? He’s handsome and winsome—and really, something of a jerk. For far too long, he can’t let either Addison or Meredith go, can’t commit himself to either one, and won’t admit it even to himself.
This is not heroic in any way. And even the brilliant, life-saving surgery isn’t heroic; it’s his job, it’s what he’s paid to do, what he’s trained to do. Heroism is going beyond what’s expected. There’s no risk to him, no cost, in what he does. There’s no reason not to do it.
So he’s not a hero, any more than Meredith is. That eliminates the two romantic leads; who are our other candidates?
At the start of the first episode, after we’re introduced to Meredith Grey and her situation, the next scene is a group of interns starting their careers at Seattle Grace. These are the characters we’ll follow through the series. Do any of them qualify as heroes?
The impulsive Izzie Stevens, perhaps? Izzie, who gets obsessed with certain patients, often skirting the bounds of the ethical? Who doesn’t have the courage to deal honestly with her hockey-playing ex-boyfriend? Who repeatedly teases her roommate George? Who regularly abuses Meredith’s hospitality? I don’t think so.
The brilliant but emotionally stunted Christina Yang? The woman whose biggest failing as a doctor is her inability to see her patients as human beings? The workaholic who’s so out of touch with her feelings that she can barely talk to the man who impregnated her, who doesn’t tell him she’s pregnant, and who doesn’t even call him by his first name? No. Heroes can be screwed up, but Christina is clearly so focused on her career that she has no real concept of right and wrong, and lacks any sort of emotional courage at all.
George O’Malley, the bumbling, soft-spoken, soft-bodied young man who barely made it into the program at Seattle Grace in the first place?
Well… maybe, yeah. Let’s take a closer look.
When we first meet George, our introduction to him is when he reminds Meredith that they had met at a mixer, and she’d been wearing “strappy sandals.” He then immediately realizes that Real Men Don’t Notice Shoes and says, “Now you think I’m gay. Ah, no, I’m not gay, it’s just that you were, ah, unforgettable…”
He has a crush on Meredith, but can’t even hold Meredith’s attention long enough to tell her. First impressions are not his strong point.
In fact, George makes disastrous first impressions. George doesn’t impress anyone. Dr. Bailey calls him a puppy. Dr. Burke chooses him for his first surgery because he expects George to be easy to terrorize. When George is about to start that first surgery, other interns place bets on whether he’s going to cry, faint, crap his pants, sweat himself unsterile, screw up the procedure, or simply collapse. They think he’s weak.
But he’s not. George doesn’t do any of those, at least not initially. He does fine at first, to everyone’s surprise, but when he does make a mistake, he can’t recover. He freezes, and Dr. Burke has to take over.
Later in the pilot, though, when he makes his second mistake by telling a woman that her husband will be fine, he takes responsibility. He’s the one who tells her that her husband is dead. He doesn’t hesitate, or run off; he does his best to atone for making a promise he had no right to make and could not keep. He did something wrong, but he doesn’t try to cover it up, he tries to make it right.
Miserable over his two failures, he tells Meredith he should have been a postal worker, because he’s dependable, rather than brilliant. His family thinks being a surgeon practically makes him a superhero, and he can’t see himself that way. He’s not a big, strong, handsome surgeon, fearlessly healing patients, master of every situation; he’s just good ol’ George.
That hardly sounds like a hero, does it?
But he is good ol’ George, and he is dependable. You can depend on George to try to do what’s right, whether it’s easy or not, and not to give up. He’s willing to let his perceived betters do the hard stuff, willing to yield to their superior knowledge and experience, but if they don’t do what needs doing, he will. He never puts himself forward, but he steps up when he sees the need.
When he’s trapped in a broken elevator on the way to the operating room with another, apparently more talented intern, accompanying a heart patient who needs immediate surgery, George stands back while the experts try to talk Alex through the surgery that will keep the patient alive.
But Alex freezes. He’s in over his head and he knows it, and he can’t perform the surgery.
George doesn’t freeze. He steps up, does the surgery unaided, without the resources of the O.R., and saves the patient’s life. When the chips are down and no one else can do what needs to be done, George will at least try.
Later, when the hospital is in chaos with a series of disasters, when the very pregnant Dr. Bailey is having a hard time, when her husband has been critically injured in a car wreck, Dr. Bailey goes into labor, but despairing over her husband’s injury she refuses to allow her baby to be delivered. Others try to talk sense to her, but they’re all distracted, all making appeals to simple rationality, and Bailey isn’t having it. Eventually Addison Shepherd, Bailey’s obstetrician, has given up on her, everyone has given up on her, but George—George never gives up. It’s George who talks her around, who speaks to her on her own terms. It’s George who sees to it that the baby is safely delivered.
When an anesthesiologist, Dr. Taylor, shows up for surgery smelling of booze, it’s George who questions his fitness to be there. He chooses to do what he thinks is right even though it means opposing those who outrank him.
&nbs
p; When Joe the bartender needs surgery but has no way to pay for it, it’s George who fills out the grant application to get the surgery treated as research, and who talks Chief of Surgery Webber into signing it.
George does not give up. He sees what needs to be done, and if no one better steps forward, he does it.
He doesn’t always succeed. Early on he pulls a shift working trauma codes in the emergency room, expecting to save a dozen lives, but he doesn’t. Most of his patients die. It’s only afterward that Christina tells him that 95% of trauma code patients die. He demands to know why no one told him that before, but you know, watching him, that it wouldn’t have made any difference. He did his best, regardless of how may lived or died, because that’s who he is.
Nor is it just on big things, or medical matters, where George comes through. He’s always there for the little things, as well, trying to do what’s right.
When Joe the bartender collapses, George, Meredith, and Christina all rush to his aid, but when Joe insists on walking across the street to the hospital under his own power, it’s George who walks beside him to steady him.
When Meredith is marching out of the hospital into the rain in a huff, it’s George who runs after her with an umbrella.
When Meredith is by her own admission drunk, and heads for her car, it’s George who demands her keys rather than letting her drive.
He’s always there doing his part, backing up his friends. Even when they’re doing something wrong, he’ll try to talk them out of it, but when he can’t—and he pretty much always can’t—he’ll still do his best to protect them from the consequences.
And he has unexpected depths. When he finds himself temporarily sleeping on Dr. Burke’s couch, he turns out to share Burke’s musical tastes and jams with him; we discover he regularly runs several miles every morning, as well. George has a lot going on.
But his friends, Meredith and Izzie and Christina, don’t notice. To them, George is the bumbling nobody they thought they met that first day, and nothing seems able to dislodge that idea.
Olivia, the nurse George dates, doesn’t see him as a bumbling fool.
Callie, the resident he hooks up with later, doesn’t see him as a bumbling fool, either—in fact, at first she almost idolizes him, and when Izzie finally realizes this and points it out (“He’s her McDreamy!”), the others find it hard to believe and rather funny. George? Someone to admire?
I’m reminded of all those people who look at Clark Kent and can’t see that he’s Superman. George’s babyface is as effective a disguise as those unnecessary glasses that Kal-El wears. Callie can see right through it. Olivia, well, maybe she doesn’t see Superman, but she does notice that Clark’s not exactly a loser himself.
Some people can learn to see the heroic George. Dr. Burke initially sees him as the weak, useless intern, but gradually comes to respect him, and winds up so friendly with him that Christina is jealous.
Christina and Izzie, though, never see past the facade. When George and Meredith have their disastrous sexual encounter, Meredith herself says she was the one at fault, and Christina and Izzie initially accept that without question—but still, later they both blame George for refusing to accept Meredith’s apology, even though they don’t know the details. They can’t really imagine a circumstance where George is right and Meredith is wrong, despite all that’s happened up to that point, all the times that Meredith has been foolish or selfish, all the times George has been brave and generous.
They see what they expect to see—the mild-mannered intern, not the hero.
And continuing on the question of how people see George, one of the most interesting cases is how Ellis Grey, Meredith’s mother, sees him. In her dementia, she sees him as her ex-husband Thatcher, Meredith’s father.
Ellis despised Thatcher Grey. She thought he was weak and worthless, and left him for another man. She therefore sees George as weak and worthless—but she still makes demands of him, and George does his best to obey.
Once Ellis has pointed it out, Chief Webber and even Meredith can see the resemblances between George and Thatcher—but they interpret it differently. To them, Thatcher was a kind and good man. To Meredith, her father’s great failing wasn’t that he was worthless, but that he didn’t stand up to her mother, didn’t fight for his daughter—but when she confronts her father, he says he did fight. He merely lost, and moved on.
There’s probably more to that story, and it doesn’t necessarily relate to George in any case, except that we can see that the daughter, while not the domineering workaholic bitch her mother was, is just as incapable of seeing George as the hero he is as her mother was of seeing Thatcher as a loving husband.
Callie and maybe Olivia know better, Burke comes to see George as a fine fellow, Alex sometimes admits that George has done something valiant, but most of the characters can’t see past the soft features and stammer. They can’t see George as a hero, no matter what he does.
Even George can’t see himself as a hero.
So George is unappreciated, subjected to constant belittlement by Christina and Izzie—Izzie consistently treats him like a kid brother and refuses to take him seriously as an adult male, while Christina does her best to simply ignore him. Still, he stands up for his friends, does what he knows is right, and remains true to himself. He’s steadfast, loyal, brave, and honest.
He’s not perfect, he does make mistakes, but unlike any other character on the show, he owns up to his mistakes and tries to correct them and do better next time. He always tries to do the right thing, and he’s always considerate of others.
And no matter what some of the characters may think, that does make him a hero.
Books & Movies
Pride & Prejudice: A World At War
Originally published in Flirting with Pride and Prejudice
One of the oddest features of Pride and Prejudice for some modern readers has nothing to do with the class structure, sexual morality, mercenary marriages, or other oft-cited differences between Austen’s time and our own, but rather, the realization of just when the story is taking place, and what was happening in the world at that time.
According to detailed analyses by Frank MacKinnon and R.W. Chapman, Pride and Prejudice opens in September of 1811, and reaches its happy conclusion late in 1812. This may be incorrect—they need to fudge at least one date, claiming Mr. Gardiner mis-dated a letter—but it does fit well with what we know of the story.
P.B.S. Andrews argues that the calendar better fits dates from 1799 through 1803.
In either case, however, England was in the midst of the French/Napoleonic Wars at the time. Thousands of men were fighting and dying on the Continent, yet Austen never once mentions France; the word “war” appears exactly once, in a reference to Elizabeth’s hope that the War Office will not send another regiment of militia to Meryton after the first is removed to Brighton.
Yes, England is raising militia at Meryton and then sending them to Brighton, presumably to defend against the possibility of a French invasion, but this does not appear to be a matter of any great concern to the Bennets or Darcys. When Wickham is given a commission in the regulars, the possibility that this might get him shot on a battlefield in Spain or Belgium is never mentioned.
In England, the militia was only summoned when the bulk of the regular army was abroad—as of course it was, from that earliest suggested date of 1799 through the novel’s publication in 1813, fighting the French Wars. This is never mentioned.
If Messrs. MacKinnon and Chapman are correct in their chronology, then the militia’s move to Brighton is in direct response to Napoleon marching east from Paris with three-quarters of a million men, bound for Russia. The United States declared war on Britain around the time of Lydia’s sixteenth birthday.
What’s more, much of the English militia of the time was employed in putting down unrest in the industrializing counties to the north; the Luddites were active from 1811 to 1816, sabotaging machinery in Yorkshire, Nottin
ghamshire, Leicestershire, and Mr. Darcy’s own Derbyshire and being hanged for it.
There is no hint of this in Ms. Austen’s narrative.
But there is one truly curious item, in the final chapter, Chapter 61, when Austen tells us the fate of Wickham and Lydia, “Their manner of living, even when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the extreme.”
“Restoration of peace”? Except for the brief interruption of the Peace of Amiens from March 25, 1802 through May 18, 1803, England was at war for all of Jane Austen’s adult life prior to the publication of Pride and Prejudice. (She was sixteen when England entered the French Wars.) Was this wishful thinking on Austen’s part?
Or it might be that Andrews is correct about the dates, and the peace referred to is indeed the Peace of Amiens—but in that case, it was careless of Austen to leave that line there in 1813, when she knew very well how brief that peace had been. She seems to be referring to a lasting peace, one that would keep Wickham safely on England’s shores, and no such peace had been brought about prior to the book’s publication. It did not even look terribly certain—Napoleon had suffered tremendous losses in the Russian campaign, but assuming MacKinnon and Chapman are correct, his retreat from Moscow was not yet begun when Elizabeth Bennet became Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Pride and Prejudice had been in print for months before Napoleon’s first abdication.
Yet nothing else makes sense but to assume that Austen was predicting an early end to hostilities and a solid peace thereafter.
In the event she was correct, as after the false start of 1814 and Napoleon’s subsequent escape from Elba a real peace did settle upon Europe in 1815, and Britain managed to remain free of major wars for the next few decades—but how could Austen have anticipated that, after living through more than twenty years of almost constant conflict?
Mind Candy Page 12
