Topic Research: Epic Heroes

     While I was on the fence about which topic to pick, I ultimately decided that epic heroes is the most interesting topic to me.  Reading through the Ramayana really helped to solidify my decision.  I love the character of Rama.  He is a larger than life figure with seemingly no faults, at least from what I have read thus far.  He is a natural born leader and a prodigy in every sense of the word.  It would be really fun to write about someone such as Rama.  The fact that Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu makes his story even more interesting; I can see parallels from these ancient Indian stories to other ancient Greek and Nordic stories.  For instance, heroes such as Hercules and Thor were also godlike beings and had crazy heroic adventures.  I would love to be able to write about someone who is practically invincible!  Reading through the PDE of The Ramayana helped me decide that I wanted to write about heroes.  It was cool to see Rama as a child of prophecy, basically sent to combat against the ever fearsome demons.  The moment that Rama took out a whole army of demons single-handed made me realize that I could really write about anything if I used a character such as Rama--he is that powerful.  I really liked this portion from Part B.  I think it would be fun to write about a character taking on a whole army.  I wondered if there were any other larger than life heroic figures and after some research I came upon the next character that inspired my to choose this topic: Krishna.
     After some reading, I discovered that Krishna was in fact the 8th incarnation of Vishnu (while Rama was the 7th).  Within India, he is seen as a divine being in his own right.  While Rama is the central character of the Ramayana, it appeared as though Krishna was a central figure of several other ancient Indian texts, including the Bhagavad Gita.  Some of the earliest stories of Krishna were seen in the Mahabharata.  One of the stories that fascinated me the most about Krishna (here it is) comes from when this deity was just an infant.  The demon woman Putana attempts to kill Krishna when he was just an infant.  She went to visit him under the ruse that she was a goddess and was going to breastfeed him.  However, the young god not only avoided being killed by Putana, while feeding on her he held on so tight that he sucked the life out of her and killed her.  It is cool to see the power that some of these heroes are inherently born with. 
     Finally, I looked for other heroes besides these two very popular ones and came upon Karna.  He seemed much more dynamic than both Rama and Krishna.  Rama appeared to be the ideal hero, while Krishna was also very powerful, friendly, and had a mischievous side.  Karna appears to be more of a tortured hero, who has his not so great sides as well.  One such story I was reading about Karna included some of his past, such as growing up without a family and being a brilliant child.  Though he was brilliant, he perhaps did not receive the recognition he thought he deserved and became bitter and resentful.  A specific story I found included the time he outshone the Pandavas.  It would be crazy to write about a single character outperforming a group of legends.  A character like this,  that is an anti-hero in many ways, would be a lot of fun to work with besides someone as perfect as Rama. 

The deity Krishna shown as an infant.

Source: Flickr