Noah Halili - Two Friends: The Hero and The Ally

  The 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers begins its story with the introduction of two friends, Lewis Nixon and Richard Winters. The two men are shown to be close friends who enlisted together as a part of the 101st Airborne Division. In the Hero’s Journey, one common character archetype is the Ally. Iris March writes, “Every Hero needs a friend to help them. An Ally is usually a friendly figure who fights by the Hero’s side” (March 2023). Interestingly, Nixon begins the series as the ally to Winters’s role of hero. However, there eventually comes a time when Winters returns the favor and becomes the ally of Nixon’s story. This shows that the role of the Ally can go both ways between two individuals.

In the beginning of the war, Nixon appears to have more authority among the military than Winters does. However, they seem to treat each other with the utmost respect and good friends. At the end of episode 2: Day of Days, Nixon walks with Winters and congratulates Winters on his success at the Battle of Brécourt Manor. However, he notices that Winters is distraught over the battle. It is during this encounter that Winters shares that he lost a private under his command during the battle and felt particularly upset over the horrific reality of the war. To comfort him, Nixon attempts to show that Winters’s actions were both correct and worth the sacrifice by stating that the stolen intel would be a turning point for the Allied advance. 

A second instance of Nixon acting as the ally archetype occurs in episode 5: Crossroads. Once again, he speaks with Winters in the aftermath of a battle. Winters, having lost another soldier under his command, is crouched down alone with a saddened look on his face. Nixon begins the conversation by asking if Winters is okay. As he did before, Nixon offers comfort by spinning a positive lens on the situation. He points out that for the life of that one soldier, they managed to eliminate somewhere around 150 German soldiers. Both of these encounters show Nixon to be a place of comfort for Winters. Being that the two are so close, Nixon knows his words will have an impact on Winters and that he can help relieve the depression of war.

Strangely, Winters's role in the story shifts to being an ally for Nixon in the later parts of the series. In episode 9: Why We Fight, it is instead Nixon who is struggling to grasp the deaths of those under his command. He expresses frustration with Winters stating that he does not know how to explain to the families that the men never managed to jump out of the plane before they were killed. Winters takes up his role as the ally and states, “You tell ‘em what you always tell ‘em– their sons died as heroes” (Band of Brothers). The roles here have completely reversed and now Nixon is the hero who is having to accept loss whereas Winters is the ally providing comfort.

This reversal of roles is especially shown in the final episode of the miniseries, Points. It is in this episode that Easy Company takes control of the Eagle’s Nest, hideout of the Nazi superiors, and the war in Europe comes to a close. By this point in the war, Nixon had gained a drinking problem and often found himself angry with everything around him when he found their supplies lacking in alcohol. With the news of the war’s conclusion, Winters chooses to bring Nixon somewhere to get his mind off of the war. It is then that Winters reveals to Nixon that they discovered a cellar with over 10,000 bottles of wine collected from across the war. Nixon, who had previously struggled to find any peace or happiness in the later parts of the war, is left completely speechless. Winters then suggests that they celebrate alongside the men in the company and avoid wasting these bottles by leaving them.

These two friends served with each other for their entire involvement in WWII. They carried each other through the hardest battles with Easy Company and celebrated together for the easy operations. In my opinion, there is no better example of the ally archetype on a journey. Not only do they serve as an example of this archetype as outlined by Iris March, but they also show that the person who begins as the ally might ultimately need an ally of their own.


Source:


https://www.irismarshedits.com/post/heros-journey-ally-archetype 


Band of Brothers

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