Christopher Columbus: A Hero

397 Words2 Pages
During my younger years of education, I was taught and deeply believed that Christopher Columbus was a hero. This belief was established as a reality in not only my mind, but the minds of many young public school students, through indoctrinated textbooks. We were taught to associate Christopher Columbus’s name with conquest, heroism, and discovery, similar to how Kenneth Burke describes the chickens who identified with food whenever they heard a specific bell. We had acquired several meanings for his name, similar to the word cloud below. The idea that Christopher Columbus discovered a new land, educated “ignorant savages,” and bravely fought for a new world became a reality for myself and others. However, these words and ideas were abstractions,