Echo and Narcissus

Echo and Narcissus is a story about Echo, a nymph, and her lover Narcissus, a human. The God Juno punishes Echo for her mistakes by stopping her from asking questions and engaging in conversations with others. One day Echo was at a pond and saw a human man, Narcissus. He fell in love with her the moment he saw her, but Echo was unable to sustain a conversation with him because she could only answer questions. Narcissus becomes frustrated with her, looks into the pond, and falls in love with himself after seeing his own reflection. The God Rhamnusia did this to him as a punishment for scorning the nymphs. He cried into the pond and his tears made his reflection in the pond disappear. He yelled goodbye (to himself) although Echo responded to him. He continued to cry and laid by the pond until his friends found his body replaced by a group of white, yellow, and purple flowers.

(movemequotes.com) This is a picture of Narcissus gazing at himself in the water. He stares and cries for hours and is in love with himself.

A narcissist I abhor is Adolf Hitler. Obviously I abhor him as he is the mastermind of the genocide of millions of Jews and other minorities. He ruled Nazi Germany and proclaimed himself ruler of pretty much everyone. He believed that he was the key to restoring Germany to its former power and worked to gain followers until he was the leader of the entire country. His narcissism actually made him a great leader because he convinced others to look at him just as he looked at himself. He made everyone admire himself and what he stood for. An altruistic person I admire is Wesley Autrey. He was the man who made headlines back in 2007 for saving a man who fell into the subway tracks. The man was having a seizure on the train tracks and Mr. Autrey dove in after him and pinned both of them in the small space between the track and the train. He was inches away from death, but risked his life in order to save a man he had never met before. After both he and the seizure victim were rescued from under the train, he commented "I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right.” He refused medical attention and later that night visited the man he had saved in the hospital. I remember reading about this after it happened and thinking how incredibly selfless of a person would jump under a train and risk death to help someone else.