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Author Topic: Top 10 working-class heroes in books  (Read 603 times)

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Top 10 working-class heroes in books
« on: June 23, 2018, 11:34:56 AM »
Top 10 working-class heroes in books

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“A working-class hero is something to be,” sang John Lennon. The heroes of history and fiction, however, are typically middle class. Our modern novelists like their protagonists to be sexually transgressive, personally conflicted and comfortably bourgeois. For historians, “the masses” often remain anonymous and impersonal.

The point about workers, however, is that they are not just poor, but necessarily creative and networked. The wage worker navigates a complex, integrated labour market in which the balance of power is set against them. There is something intrinsically heroic about this way of life.
 


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2. The Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell
Wellington described his own army, overwhelmingly recruited from the bottom ranks of society, as the “scum of the Earth”. The Sharpe novels follow one soldier’s career from the slums of London to the field of Waterloo. Sneered at by snooty officers, Sharpe proves himself an indomitable fighter and natural leader. As an added bonus, Sean Bean, with glorious Yorkshire accent, played Sharpe as the ultimate working-class hero in the long-running television series.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/06/top-10-working-class-heroes-in-books?CMP=share_btn_tw