The Savior Motif

• The character must come to bring enlightenment to people or to save people.
• The character may suffer for it.
• People may turn against this character because of the attempt to bring enlightenment or to help them.
• The savior helps the weak or the minority.
• The character may die for attempting to bring enlightenment or helping the people. This death may be metaphorical.
• The character may be reborn in some way. 
• The author may allude to another well known savior from literature or history. Popular in the ancient world was Prometheus while in the modern world, Jesus Christ is the more common allusion. Prometheus and Jesus are considered archetypes of the savior motif.

What is the purpose of a savior motif?

There is something special about human beings. Human beings have the capacity to sacrifice themselves for others. Not all do it and many do just the opposite: some people make others suffer so that they can have better lives. But there is the ability of some people to make the lives of others more bearable, more worthwhile, more livable, even if those some people have to suffer and die for the others. Where does this desire to self-sacrifice come from? It can't be instinctual. It runs contrary to the survival instinct. Yet it happens all the time. Look at examples of real life from our text book. Roger Rosenblatt writes about the unnamed man who kept giving a lifeline to others though he must have felt that he was in trouble and needed the lifeline himself in "The Man in the Water" on page 471 in the Elements of Literature  textbook. In "R. M. S. Titanic," Hanson W. Baldwin describes the many instances of people who steadfastly stayed on the domed ocean liner because "women and children" came first. There was the band which played continually though they must have known they were minutes from their own deaths. There was the captain, passengers, crew who were gallant at the time of their deaths so that others would not die in fear. What is it about humans that makes this possible?

Because this theme is such an important one, authors have been exploring it for millennia. The Greeks told the story of Prometheus who suffered ignominy and torture in order to bring the fire of enlightenment to humanity. Christianity had the story of Jesus Christ who died for the sins of humanity. Other cultures have their stories of self-sacrifice, each trying to explore the theme of what it is that a person would die for. The aim of these stories is really to discover what it is that a person has to live for and the  answer to what it is that we will live for is not discovered until we discover what it is that we would die for. To explore the savior motif in its many incarnations is to explore our own purpose in life. To that end, the understanding of this particular motif is most valuable.