In this week’s piece of evidence I was going to look at Sophocles’ Ajax, and the several themes it brings up such as hubris, redemption, combat trauma (PTSD) in the ancient world and the power of the gods and their relationships with mortals.
As I’ve mentioned before I’m a huge fan of Ajax, he and Diomedes are probably my favourite characters from the Iliad, and it’s interesting to see how his character has changed from one of incredible might and strength to what is now a man, plagued by a god living in despair and madness. That being said I didn’t feel that engaged with the play, perhaps it was simply the translation using archaic language or maybe it was the actual play itself, however, I didn’t feel as engaged with it as other ancient texts such as the Iliad or Sophocles’ three Theban plays which is much more comparable.
I read that during his early period, Sophocles is alleged to have admitted that he was deliberately trying to write like Aeschylus, and that could be why I prefer his three Theban plays rather than Ajax and it could also be why I’m struggling to get into Agamemnon. I think it’s just a matter of writing style and language rather than the story plot that is preventing me from engaging with the text, this is the case for Agamemnon, for Ajax, however, I feel as though that much of the play is just dialogue, which in retrospect is what one should expect when reading a tragedy however none of it seemed to excite. I was looking at other reviews trying to gain some perspective and found one person which summarised the plot like this:
Ajax: RARRRR!!! *kills lots of sheep* Ajax: … Ajax: *feels much shame* I should kill myself Tecmessa: don’t do it Teucer: don’t do it bro Ajax: *kills self anyway* Tecmessa & Teucer: well great. now our lives are f’d. Menelaus: trololol hope the birds eat ur face Odysseus: guys maybe we shouldn’t be jerks… Agamemnon: fine whatevs Ajax: *gets buried*
That being said I should probably delve into some of the deeper meaning to the play. Both Antigone and Ajax are similar, in that they both involve the justice pertaining to the way a body is dealt with. And it’s interesting that it’s become the focus of so many famous plays. I guess there are just many elements to it that make it an entertaining concept to put into a story.
Throughout the play, Ajax is rigidly defined as the old-fashioned hero, proud and uncompromising and unable to recognize his weaknesses and limitations. Homer, who was probably Sophocles’s source for the play, also depicted Ajax as obstinate to the point of stupidity in the Iliad. It is Ajax’s hubris in rejecting the help of the goddess Athena in the first place that sets the stage for this tragedy. Despite this Ajax has great stature and nobility and dominates the play even if he is only actually on stage for a limited time, with his great deeds communicated to the audience through his son Teucer listing all the ways he had helped in the war.
One important question I thought the play presented was to what extent do individuals have a genuine choice or are merely the pawns of fate. An example of this question is another play by Sophocles, Oedipus. The king of Thebes, who has learned that his son, Oedipus, will one day kill him. The king takes steps to ensure Oedipus’s death but ends up ensuring only that he and Oedipus fail to recognize each other when they meet on the road many years later. This lack of recognition enables a dispute in which Oedipus slays his father without thinking twice and ends up marrying his mother just as it was professed.
Although one might think that moral responsibility implies the existence of a free will, the human factors of tragedy are blamed and held responsible which is probably why this is such a recurring theme in Greek tragedies. It is the king’s exercise of free will that ironically binds him to the thread of destiny. This mysterious, inexplicable association between will and fate is visible in many Greek myths and seeing as though their beliefs in deities and their daily lives were almost one, make sense that this idea of “free will” be questioned time and time again.
In conclusion, whilst, I wasn’t particularly fond of the play, be that because of the particular translation I read or because of the plot itself, it still raises very important questions, themes and ideas, such as free will, the idea of “the old-fashioned hero” and the justice of the way a body is dealt with — engaging the audience in what is a “stimulating play.”
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