Ajax (Criticism)

Criticism

Sheri E. Metzger

Metzger is a Ph.D., specializing in literature and drama at the University of New Mexico. In this essay, she discusses how Renaissance humanism and the heroic nature of the epic form sustains the modern appeal of Sophocles’s drama.

No doubt students might think that there is little reason to read Sophocles, or plays such as Ajax. In fact, students might consider the mythic warriors of Greek epic and drama outdated or even unimportant as the twentieth century nears its end. This was how many people viewed Greek drama for hundreds of years following the end of the Golden Age of Greece. Yet in thirteenth century Italy, a new movement that came to be called humanism resurrected classical Greek texts, including drama, and found that there was a place for these ancient heroes in educating young men.

At that time, it was the goal of every young man of aristocratic birth to serve his country. The idea behind humanism was to prepare a young man for his new role in civic life, and ethics was an important feature of this new emphasis on education. Classical Latin and Greek became crucial elements of a gentleman’s education, while each country’s vernacular language became the language of the peasant class. Within two hundred years, knowledge of classical Greek would become an essential attribute of an educated man.

With the adoption of these languages, the literature soon followed, and this included Greek drama. Greek drama taught important lessons about loyalty, heroism, and religion. From these plays young men learned about leadership and responsibility. Young gentlemen also learned that heroism was more than bravery on the battlefield. They learned from Ajax that heroism coupled with excessive pride would lead to disaster. Heroism brought with it responsibility and the need for compromise.

Young men also learned that great heroes like Odysseus were heroic not just because they were brave and won many battles, but because they did what was expected of them. Odysseus was heroic because he could put aside his anger at Ajax and do what he knew to be the right thing. Odysseus also knew that Ajax had offended the gods, and that he too would offend the gods if Ajax were to be denied burial. From Odysseus, young men learned about the correct relationship between man and god. These models for gentlemanly behavior became an important reason to study classical literature.

Humanism also emphasized intellectual autonomy and individual expression. Sophocles’s plays focused on these attributes. He created heroes whose need to express their individuality became the centerpiece of drama. In his book on Greek drama, J. Michael Walton contends that Sophocles created a “world of unusual personal detail, a world in which a small object or a human gesture can define a man’s estate.” The world portrayed on stage ceased to be huge, with mythic heroes who were larger than life.

In Ajax, the audience perceives a protagonist in profound pain. Walton maintains that the audience sees is not the “stoicism of mankind but the pain to which he is heir.” The audience cannot help but react to this individual suffering.

Clearly, as Walton notes, Sophocles is able to engage the audience’s sympathy for the individual. This became increasingly important as the world grew larger and more complex, and was as true of the fledgling scientific world of the Renaissance as it is today.

The Renaissance humanist was willing to accept the responsibility of governing that accompanied intellectual autonomy. Here, too, the Greek model proved important. Greek heroes exemplified responsibility to their gods and to the men who fought beside them. Ajax’s tragedy was in betraying those with whom he fought: Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Menelaus. His shame is twofold — deriving from the mistaken slaughter of animals and his madness that turned such terrible anger on his allies.

In her discussion on the use of debate and conflict in Sophoclean tragedy, Jacqueline de Romilly states that there is a contrast in Ajax between “an aristocratic ethic based on honor and a more humane ethic based on obligations to individuals.” This obligation to the individual is seen in Odysseus’s championing of Ajax’s burial rights. Odysseus clearly understands the god’s directive that bodies must be buried, but his reasons go beyond that. Although he abhors Ajax’s actions, Odysseus acknowledges that Ajax was a great warrior who fought bravely for their causes:

“Deny him burial and trample justice! I loathed him, more than any other Greek in camp. I detested all he was — and still I say he was the bravest man I ever saw, except for Achilles, the best and bravest who ever came to Troy. Admit it! Justice demands! If you shame him you smear God’s law. Hate him or love him, he was an honorable man; you owe him honor.”

In the ensuing argument with Agamemnon, Odysseus contends that Ajax deserves respect. In the end, as both Agamemnon and Odysseus agree, this is fulfilling obligations and providing the honors rightfully bestowed upon an honorable man. Doing what was right, what benefited the individual man, was a crucial part of Odysseus’s decision.

Honesty and the search for truth were also important elements of the humanist movement, and they were important to defining the strengths of the individual. Ajax chooses to die alone, separate from family and the men who still follow him. He commits suicide. This is not the expected death for a great hero — Ajax is in great pain and thinks that he can redeem his honor only through taking his own life. In her essay on the feminine in Greek drama, Froma I. Zeitlin argues that Ajax’s suicide is a woman’s way of dying but that Ajax appropriates a woman’s death and makes it masculine:

“Suicide is a solution in tragedy normally reserved only for women — and what we are given to witness is this convention borrowed for a man’s version of it. He [Ajax] dies a heroic death, then, in the women’s way, a whetted will penetrated by a whetted weapon, befitting... the curious ambiguities of this most masculine hero.”

Zeitlin asserts that although Ajax briefly considers Tecmessa’s pleas, to continue living would feminize his will and deepen his shame. Ajax is embracing the only recourse left to an honorable man, hoping to restore his family’s honor. He deceives his family and the chorus, convincing them that he is recovering and the danger has passed.

There is a temptation to label Ajax’s words as lies, heaping more dishonor on a man already dishonored. But Ajax is a complex man, and as Zeitlin suggests, Ajax “seems to have arrived at the kind of tragic knowledge we recognize as intrinsically true to the genre.” This is because, as Zeitlin argues, although “deceit and intrigue are condemned in women, they are also seen as natural to her sphere of operations and the dictates of her nature.”

Thus, since Ajax has chosen to die in the manner of women, that he first deceives those around him means that he is employing, as Zeitlin

notes, a “feminine strategy enlisted in the service of restoring an unequivocal manliness he can only achieve... by dying the manly death... in the woman’s way.” The audience is left with the knowledge that Ajax took the only choice still left to him, the choice to die. For Ajax, truth lies in his acceptance of his actions.

Medieval Christianity taught that obedience was more important than individualism, but humanism stressed just the opposite. If individualism was identified with arrogance, the study of classical Greek pointed to individualism as the mark of the strong, virtuous man — one who saw good deeds, not as the way to get into heaven, but as the way to create a better world.

This individualism is not with problems, as the complexity of Ajax illustrates. The opening ceremonies of the festival in which Sophocles presented his plays included honoring the children of Greece’s war victims. Simon Goldhill states that this ceremony affirms the connection between these young men and the city that has been responsible for their education. It was a moment of civic pride, and combined with the remainder of the ceremonies, it provided an important civic occasion.

Yet as these ceremonies affirm the importance of the city, the tragedies themselves affirm the importance of the individual. This tension, this ambiguity in the hero, provides for a realistic depiction. This is not a remote hero without fault; this is a hero who is capable of mistakes.

As Goldhill observes, “the negative example of Ajax is touched with a certain glory. It is an essential dynamic of Sophocles’s tragedy that Ajax should seem both an outstanding hero and also unacceptable in society. The hero does not simply reverse the norms of what it means to fit into society but makes a problem of such integration.”

Ajax is almost setting a precedent for the twentieth-century anti-hero. The modern hero is prepared to do the right thing, to rebel against a controlling government when it is wrong. Athena’s role as god is not unlike the authority of modern government. She establishes laws and expects exact obedience, and she does not expect to be challenged. Ajax does challenge authority; but as Goldhill points out, Ajax, although managing to transgress what is expected of him, “achieves his greatness, his superhuman status, precisely by such transgression.”

Ajax is first and foremost an individual. He wants to be in control of his destiny, and although not flawless, he proves that he is heroic in coming to terms with those faults. The Greek tragic hero was an important model for the autonomy and individual expression that humanists embraced, and it became an important element in creating the Renaissance man who would build the foundation of the modern world. Humanism’s resurrection of Greek drama created a profound change in the way Renaissance men approached society and religion, and this has carried over into the twentieth century.

Source: Sheri E. Metzger, for Drama for Students, Gale, 2000.

What Do I Read Next?

• Oedipus Rex, a drama written by Sophocles (c. 430-426 B.C.), is the story of one man’s attempts to escape his fate. It is the dramatist’s best-known play.
• Antigone, also by Sophocles (c. 441 B.C.), focuses on the problems of excessive pride and stubbornness. Like Ajax, this play emphasizes the importance of the ritualized practice of burial of the dead.
• Sophocles’s Electra (c. 425-410 B.C.) examines the family tragedy that surrounds the death of Agamemnon.
• Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus (c. 490 B.C.), is the story of how Prometheus is punished for disobeying Zeus.