Legend
The legend of John Henry has been compared to that of other American "Big Men", such as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. John Henry's heroism is associated with several elements: his strength and grit as a working-class common man, his status as a hero to African American laborers, and his allegorical depiction of "the tragedy of man versus machine" and other aspects of modernization.
There are many versions of John Henry's story. In almost all versions of the story, John Henry is a black man of exceptional physical gifts, a former slave, possibly born in Tennessee. Henry becomes the greatest "steel-driver" in the mid-nineteenth-century push to expand railroads from the East Coast of the United States, across and through the mountains, to the frontier West. However, the owner of the railroad buys a steam-powered hammer to do the work of his mostly black steel-driving crew. To save his job and the jobs of his men, John Henry challenges the owner to a contest: Henry will race the steam-powered hammer. Henry won the race. However, as result pushing himself to beat the machine, he collapsed and died.
Read more about this topic: John Henry (folklore)
Famous quotes containing the word legend:
“The legend of Felix is ended, the toiling of Felix is done;
The Master has paid him his wages, the goal of his journey is won;
He rests, but he never is idle; a thousand years pass like a day,
In the glad surprise of Paradise where work is sweeter than play.”
—Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)
“We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.”
—Hugo Ball (1886–1927)
“A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I’m still doing it.”
—Miles Davis (1926–1991)