Are they heroes? A character study of Christopher Paolini’s The Inheritance Cycle

Sammanfattning: This essay will study how the two main characters Eragon and Roran in Christopher Paolini’s fantasy series The Inheritance Cycle conform to the literary ideal of the hero and traits of a traditional male according to Jeffrey A. Brown and Leanna Madell who both use Hegemonic Masculinity Theory. The essay does this by a qualitative reading of Inheritance which is the final part in a fantasy novel series and studies how Paolini’s characters fit within the Hero archetype and if their masculinity could be considered hegemonic as per Brown and Madell’s definition of the term.