This is the introduction from an essay i wrote when i was studying english and university and i find the idea of the hero and the villian a fascinating concept.....

‘There is nothing to be taken from the Holocaust that imbues anyone with hope or any sort of redemption. But the need for heroes is so strong we’ll manufacture them’ (Raul Hilberg). To what extent do the Holocaust texts that you have studied ‘manufacture’ heroes as their protagonists?
Hilberg’s statement rings true in many Holocaust texts; the Holocaust is an event so shocking that many people need a hero to provide faith in human morality, just as much as they need a villain to blame for such horror. Primo Levi addresses this simplification when he outlines many people’s desire for ‘the good guys and the bad guys’, he then goes on to show the need for a hero when he summarises public perception with the words: ‘the good must prevail, otherwise the world would be subverted.’ This essay aims to explore why there is this need for the good side and the bad side, which therefore causes the manufacturing of a hero and villain. Through Spielberg’s epic film Schindler’s List, Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved and Art Spielelman’s Maus the idea of what is heroic will be examined. If these texts do manufacture heroes, the question remains, why is a hero needed in an event which has no real happy ending?