Katie Lovell -- Maturity, Society, and Heroism
  
  Excellent essay!  I agree wholeheartedly that John Grady Cole
  returns to Texas from Mexico almost as a broken man, rather than 
  as any sort of a hero.  I'm not sure it's quite fair, though, to 
  reproach him for that (especially for the way he seems to blame fate
  for all the ways his adventures in Mexico went wrong) the way you 
  seem to be doing.  After all, he never says he wanted that (being a 
  hero) for himself.  He really just wanted a place where he could do 
  the things he loved and really understood -- working with horses and 
  ranching.  Yes, a stronger person might have said "I won't let myself
  get romantically involved with my boss's daughter."  But for someone
  who hasn't had the experience of romantic love before, the first 
  such relationship one has can and might seem like unstoppable fate.  
  Confronted with the corruption of Captain and the Mexican prison, I 
  think he really just wanted to get out of the experience alive.
  Idealistic notions of "fixing" that system had to be the farthest 
  thing from his mind (that would essentially be impossible, anyway,
  for one young foreigner acting alone).  I'm not saying that it would
  be right to see him as a hero; my point is really just that not everyone 
  can be a hero.
  
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