Painting by Col. Charles Waterhouse of Col. John Ripley dangling above Cua Viet River as Angry North Vietnamese soldiers fire upon him.
A representative character is a person who perceives the ideals, principles, and qualities that are desired and admired by a community or nation, and translates them into concrete programs of life and culture.
We might point to famous figures like General George Patton or those lesser known people such as self-sacrificing clergy, devoted teachers, or selfless community leaders who draw and fuse society together and set the tone for their communities. Modern culture discourages the idea of representative characters and proposes false and unrepresentative characters that correspond to our mass society.
An American Knight: The Life of John W. Ripley, USMC. The first cradle-to-grave biography of the great American hero Colonel John Ripley. Available in Hardcover or soft.
John Horvat II, Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here, and Where We Need To Go (York, Penn.: York Press, 2013), 200.
