There’s no such thing as a self-made man.
We do like repeating the myth though, don’t we? The puller-up-by-bootstraps, the lone genius, the empire builder who started with nothing – we keep telling the story like it means something. And of course we do, it’s flattering and neat. It lets us think that we too, might escape dependence and rise by sheer force of will. That maybe success is earned, not stolen.
But nobody builds anything from nothing. You’d have to give birth to yourself, grow your own food while learning to crawl and invent your own language before you could say “self-made-man.” The moment you poke it, the myth collapses under its own weight.
The Fisher King (1991) explains how destructive that myth is: we see exactly what it does to people and to society. What it costs everyone when someone believes they’ve earned their place above the crowd.
Jack Lucas believed it completely. A radio star in his tower, he was clever, ruthless and loved the sound of his own voice. When a confused, lonely caller phoned in about a girl in a bar, Jack told him she was a yuppie, and all yuppies “must be stopped.” It was just words. Just content. Just another night on air. But this time, seven people died at Babbitt’s because Jack didn’t care where his words landed.
And that’s why the “self-made” myth has a rotten core behind the allure. It lies about success while it corrodes responsibility.
If you were to believe you owe nothing to anyone, why would you care about the cost of your words or your choices? You’d see life as a crab bucket scrambling up claws-first over the backs of everyone else. The myth trains you to be a taker and to measure your worth by how high you rise above the rest. Worst of all, it convinces you that needing help is weakness, and giving help is a burden.
But Jack isn’t a lost cause – not completely, anyway. He doesn’t ignore his actions so the shooting, and the subsequent guilt, break him. He falls down to Skid Row, relying on a woman he wouldn’t have looked at previously. Someone who fusses over him, nags him and trusts in his ability to be a better person someday. But he justifies leaning on her because he thinks it’s transactional: she gets the “reflected glory” from his washed-up celebrity, even though he’s miserable with his new station in life.
At his lowest point, Jack meets Parry. Or, to be more accurate, Parry saves Jack’s life, scaring off thugs about to set him alight. Parry, who was traumatised witnessing his wife’s violent death – which was, in turn, triggered by Jack’s words.
We learn that Jack was the catalyst for “Henry’s” death and “Parry’s” birth – his madness is Jack’s carelessness made flesh. Jack seizes what he thinks is a chance at redemption and assuaging his guilt.
He throws money at Parry and gets angry when Parry gives it to someone else. He tries matchmaking as a way of making Parry happy and – consequently – freeing Jack. And when that goes badly wrong, Jack still tries to “fix” the problem – as if a fix is possible.
He thinks the answer is one grand gesture: steal the grail, clear the debt and return to the penthouse. But without Anne this time, because he doesn’t need her once his feet are back on the ladder. He’s still thinking like someone who believes in clean transactions and solved problems – if he fixes the problem the debt is wiped and everything’s reset back to zero.
This is the delusion behind Jack’s brittle self-image. Parry isn’t healed by Jack alone – it’s a group effort. Anne opens her home again and again, arranging the date, exhausting herself for someone she barely knows. Lydia visits the hospital every day, just sitting there, being present. And Jack learns he’s not the hero here – he’s just one person in a web of people, all holding each other up.
And also.. that Parry helped him too. Because, even in the depths of his madness chasing red knights through Central Park, Parry never pretends to be self-made. He clings to Jack, he accepts help, he offers it without reluctance to others who need it. Despite his madness, he’s not weak. Even through the trauma, he knows what Jack needed to learn – that we’re all holding each other up, all the time. The only question is whether we can see it.
Which brings me, oddly enough to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2017, at the University of Houston, Arnie, the 80s embodiment of willing yourself into impossible success, stands at a podium and says something that would have been heresy in his heyday: “Don’t ever, ever call me the self-made man.”
This is the man whose entire brand was self-determination. And there he is, carefully listing everyone who helped him. Joe Weider bringing him to America. Franco Columbu, his training partner, his best friend, carrying him through everything. The bodybuilders who brought him furniture when he had nothing. James Cameron who heard something others missed – not just an accent but a machine waiting to be born.
“The whole concept of the self-made man or woman is a myth.”
Like Parry, that awareness didn’t diminish Schwarzenegger. Acknowledging the web doesn’t make you smaller – it makes you real and it connects you to something larger than your own achievements.
This is what we can take from The Fisher King: when we acknowledge our interdependence, something shifts. We stop drowning separately and start floating together. But when we pretend we’re self-made, we take without understanding the cost and rise without noticing who’s beneath our feet.
Jack’s real education isn’t just discovering he needs help: rock bottom teaches anyone that lesson fast enough. It’s learning to BE help as well. Not the grand gesture kind that clears debts and lets you leave, but the showing-up kind like Anne offers, which is unglamorous, daily and essential. The kind that doesn’t keep score.
Because every self-made success story is just the loudest part of a group project without credits. That brilliant idea you had was sparked by conversations you’ve forgotten or books someone recommended or teachers who saw something in you. The strength to persevere is borrowed from people who believed in you when you couldn’t. That business empire was built on work you’ve learned not to see.
We tell ourselves these myths because they’re flattering. But also because admitting the truth is terrifying – if we’re all holding each other up, then we’re all responsible for each other.
Every word lands somewhere. Every success is shared. Every failure, too.
People died and lives were broken because Jack believed his own mythology. But when he finally lets it go, something remarkable happens – something quieter and more real than a redemption arc. People start healing. Not through quests or magical cups, but through the ordinary labour of showing up for each other and admitting what we owe. But mostly through seeing ourselves as part of something we didn’t build alone and can’t maintain alone.
So where does that leave us?
Maybe start here:
The next time you tell your success story, count the invisible hands. Name them if you can. The colleague who covered for you. The parent who drove you to practice. The friend who talked you off the ledge. The teacher who saw something. The stranger who gave you a chance.
And then – and this is the harder part – become one of those invisible hands for someone else. Not because you owe it, but because that’s how the whole thing works. We make each other. We always have.
Pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps just makes us fall over. But reaching for each other’s hands is how we all rise together. -Mom