So, What is a Working Class Hero?
Knowing this background about Lennon and the Beatles should give you a pretty good idea about the answer to this question. Basically, a working class hero is someone that has been permitted to “break though” by those who control society, in order to give the average laborer the sense that s/he, too, could someday improve his or her life by becoming rich and famous. People like John Lennon become not only heroes, but idolized symbols of the better life waiting just around the corner. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the U.S. today. In ghettos all over the country, poor black kids look up to rappers and basketball players, and see these futures as their way to get out of the ghetto and improve their lives. Today, the working class hero has become the ghetto superstar. Both terms, of course, are meant in a sarcastic sense. Neither of these are actually great things to do with your life, but they are “something to be” for all those who would otherwise feel hopeless about the future. Whe
