This Year's Field

Now that the reading aspect of our class has come to an end, it is a good time to reflect on what has been learned and how it applies in today's world.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that many of the heroes we see in films, on television and in the written stories of today have aspects that are based on some of the heroes we have studied.  I don't see any out and out direct copies, but character traits and flaws are present if you are paying attention.  It is obvious that writers of today have been inspired by thousands of years worth of stories.  We didn't get to read very many, but we probably did get a good representative sampling.  After finishing all of the stories for this year's class, it seems like an appropriate time to return to our roots and evaluate the journey of the heroes.  Since that was supposed to be our focus in the class, I will give my evaluation of how they performed and their overall ranking.

Gilgamesh started pretty strong.  He gets a few points off because he wasn't really a man and had a lot of supernatural elements in play.  He also wan't able to successfully complete his task which would have earned him immortality.  He needed a little help from his best friend to conquer some foes, but we shouldn't really count that against him too much.  Why should he have to work harder than necessary?  All in all, he left, he conquered, he returned.  The heroic journey was completed and after he died, monuments were built in his honor.

Sakuntala was the title character of our second reading, but she really wasn't the heroine of the story.  Our hero was King Dusyanta.  For his journey, he is already away from home when our story begins.  He sees the woman of his dreams and decides that he can't live without her.  Unlike many stories of true love, he decides to make her one of his wives.  He gets a few points off for this.  In most stories of true love, two people end up together.  In this one, the number of people together will be a little larger.  It doesn't really fit the modern ideal, but it might work for the time it was written.  He gets a few more points off when he can't remember who she was.  Now I know that it was a curse and not his fault, but heroes need to be able to overcome these minor obstacles.  Eventually he finds his ring and the curse is lifted.  But, it takes Dusyanta a long time to find his wife and son so they can be reunited.  All is well in the end as they makeup and become a family.

Sir Gawain certainly fits the mold of heroes of today.  He may not be as perfect as King Arthur would like him to be, but he does his best.  He rises to the challenges he faces, and takes full responsibility for his actions.  His journey follows the typical path of having him leave home and then return.  One big difference however, is that his obstacles are more mental than physical.  Sir Gawain has to defeat his urges more than monsters.  He prooves worthy by resisting the opportunity to sleep with a woman he finds more beautiful than anyone in the world.  He doesn't tell the complete truth about their encounters, but he does do the right thing.  He even accepts a badge of shame that he decides to wear for the rest of his days.

Daoism doesn't really fit in to the heroic journey, so the least said on this the better.  Neo works for explaining the concept, but since it wasn't really a reading, I'll choose not to evaluate his heroic journey.

Oedipus doesn't really have enough success in the end to be called a hero.  He does follow the heroic journey a little bit.  He leaves home, although he is dumped and doesn't leave willingly.  He journeys to a different land and has success as evidenced by the fact that he was adopted by the king and was next in line for the throne.  He then returns to his original home and kills his original father and marries his original mother.  Oedipus's value as a hero is tough to evaluate.  He had a lot of interference in his life and many of the choices that were made were not his own.  But, it would be hard to evaluate any ending involving the murder of your father and incest with your mother that produces children being rated as anything other than a failure.  It works as a story, but it is not so good as a tale of a hero.

The Wife of Bath is sort of a feminist heroine.  She doesn't accomplish great deeds in the traditional sense.  She does have a journey, but we join it in progress.  She has some nice reasons for her views, but in the end, they are just her views and they may be more self serving than heroic.  I'll give her points for effort because she lived in a time where Wonder Woman and Buffy would have had a hard time achieving success.  Words are all she has, and she tells a good tale.  She may not win many converts, but she is clearly a woman ahead of her time.

Beowulf certainly models what people think of as a hero.  He has superstrength, is a master of combat and in the end, leads his people to great victories.  He follows the heroic journey by leaving home to seek out adventure.  He is probably a little better than some of the others because his journey is made to help other people and is not self serving.  Sure, he will get a little more fame and reward, but the Danes are the ones who really stand to benefit from his involvement.  After his victories abroad, he returns home and does all the right things and becomes a leader to his people.  Even in old age, he has a few tricks left and conquers a dragon.  It costs him his life and costs his people even more since he will no longer be able to defend them.  But, he was not supernatural and his days were coming to an end soon anyway.  Clearly Beowulf is a top rate hero and many of his traits are still in evidence in the media's depictions of heroes being used today in both fantasy and real life.

Othello is a little tougher to evaluate.  We come into the story after most of his heroic deeds have been performed.  It is a little bit like meeting a gunfighter in old age.  You can see that he used to be great, but opportunity does not allow him to show what he is capable of doing.  Everything we actually see in Othello can be deemed to be negative.  We know of the positives, but they just don't happen in our story.  He ends up being a guy who beats his wife, plots to kill her, and then successfully completes his plot.  Rather than take accountability for his crimes, he takes the coward's way out and chooses suicide.  He would have to be at the lower end of our hero scale and he only gets there at all based on some stories of past greatness that are not really fleshed out too well in the play.

Final Rankings
1)  Beowulf  (The perfect hero in his younger years who falters late in life just because of old age in trying to recapture his previous glory.)
2)  Sir Gawain (He has some similar traits with Beowulf but he doesn't possess any super strength.  I almost ranked him number one.)
3)  Gilgamesh (He might rank higher, but since he is part supernatural we have to rank him below the mere mortals.)
4)  Dusyanta (great in battle, not as great in love)
5)  Wife of Bath (She is a heroine in her own mind.)
6)  Othello (He has plenty of negatives including the killing of his own wife.)
7)  Oedipus (He ranks below Othello because he not only kills one parent, but he sleeps with the other.  It is tough to go lower than that.)
Not Ranked:  Daoism

Going Back to the Well

I was really into Othello and was waiting for some unexpected turns in the final act.  Unfortunately, instead of coming up with something new and exciting, Shakespeare went back to the well again and re-told his ending from Romeo and Juliet.  Our lovers end up dead together with one of them a suicide victim just like in his famous play about Verona's young lovers.  Was originality dead?  Did Shakespeare have so little respect for his audience that he simply repeated something he has already used hoping that nobody had seen the original?

I am actually kind of a fan of Shakespeare's plays, but I was not real familiar with Othello.  This story was really working for me right up until the final act.  But the repetition from previous works just killed it for me.  I probably need to see this play performed to really understand how it is being presented.  I thought the final scenes played like a comedy.  Othello smothers Desdemona not once, but twice, and despite that, she still has lines to recite in the play after having the life choked out of her.  The same thing happens with Emilia.  We are told that Iago has killed her, but then she is able to summon up the strength to get out a final song.  I just couldn't belive what I was reading.

I also have trouble figuring out exactly what Shakespeare wanted to say about Othello.  In the beginning of the play, Shakespeare goes out of his way to make the audience sympathetic towards Othello.  He makes Iago a true villain and stresses that Iago is plotting against Othello.  As an audience, we have very little choice to do anything other than root for Othello to figure out Iago's plans and put a stop to them.  This is what our hero should be able to do and anything else is bound to make him less heroic.  I don't think I am alone in thinking this is the natural course for our play to take.  But, Shakespeare doesn't do that.  Instead, he take all that sympathy that he has solicited on Othello's behalf and then pulls the rug out on us.  Othello ends up being a pretty mean guy who deserves what he gets.

I'm not sure how much of this is tied up with the racism present in the play.  It seems like Shakespeare is trying to say that Othello is just reverting back to his savage behavior.  It is almost like the audience should expect Moors to be savages and if they were anything else it would be surprising.  Othello transforms from the stable leader who had complete command over the room in Venice into the complete opposite in just a couple of days.  Othello is basically chasing shadows from the time they arrive on Cyprus.  He may be the protagonist of the story, but he is certainly no hero.  I'm not sure if there is any historic element to the Othello story or if this is a complete work of fiction, but either way, the ending was a complete let down for me.  This is just not the outcome I was expecting.  Pretty much anybody we even had a remote interest in during the play is dead or going on trial.  The only people who benefit from the events in the play are the minor characters who will be promoted to take the place of our main characters.  I knew it was going to be a tragedy, but I don't think it was unreasonable for me to expect something good to come out of these events somewhere.  Unfortunately, it just never happened.

Does Iago Want Othello for Himself?

I really enjoyed the first act of Othello because I got to see what an evil character Iago really is.  Most of the other stories we have read haven't had villains this well developed.  Iago is not a buffoon who is transparent when he is trying to stir up trouble.  Iago is really good at it.  It is fun to watch a master work in just about any kind of situation, and Iago is clearly a master  manipulator.  What really sets him apart from Unferth and other characters who have rooted against our heroes achieving their successes is that Iago can really prevent the successes from happening for Othello.

I read and re-read the second and third acts because something just seemed a little off to me on Iago's motivations.  As we discussed in class, he is mad at Othello for passing him over for promotion and/or he is mad about the possibility that Othello slept with his wife.  I think I misread this situation in class yesterday.  I originally thought that Othello sleeping with his wife wouldn't upset Iago because Iago was selfish.  Now, after reading and re-reading, I think Iago really just wants Othello for himself.  There seems to be a lot of hints of homosexuality present in the text.

Iago is clearly obsessed with sex during the play.  He brings it up on many occasions and even rather inappropriately when they are waiting on news of whether or not Othello's ship survived the storm.  However, you never see him really have any interest in having sex with his wife.  He does seem to have some interest in bedding Desdemona, but apparently it is only as a way to get revenge on Othello.  He would seem to get just as much satisfaction out of having one of the other characters bed Desdemona.  Although he mentioned wife for wife in one of his rambles, it appears to me that he might be interested in Othello for himself.

Iago seems to delight in the fact of disrupting Othello's attempts at sex with Desdemona.  He also goes on and on about how much he hates Othello and uses just about every racial slur he can think of when talking about it.  I just see this as being like how kids ridicule and taunt the kids that they really like.  It is just like a boy saying he hates a girl when he is really interested in her.  Iago may protest about Othello just a little too much.  This is classic homophobia at work.  It just appears that maybe he is interested in bedding Othello.  I haven't finished the play yet, so I'm not sure how it all turns out.  But, after reading and re-reading, I do think there is something there in the subtext supporting my view on this.  I doubt that Iago will ever bed Othello, so we will probably never know for sure.  In fact, I find myself doubting that someone as evil as Iago will even survive the play.  But, he is like a cockroach and those things have a way of surviving just about any kind of situation that arises.

Iago, Our First Supervillain

All semester long we have studdied heroes and their journeys.  While the names have changed, for the most part our heroes have triumphed in every story.  None of them have achieved all of their goals and all have fallen short of perfection, but they have all been heroic.  Finally in Othello we run into the one thing we have been missing--a supervillain.  Sure, we've had the Green Giant and he did some nice villainous things, but he relied on the supernatural for his power.  Ditto for Grendel and Grendel's mother.  Iago is our first true supervillain and because of that, my interest is already peaked for the rest of the story.

Despite the setting of the story, this is the first one that really feels more like a comic book to me.  Even though the play is called Othello, he isn't even mentioned until quite a ways into the play, at least not by name.  Iago refers to Othello as he or him.  He also uses paints a more derogatory racial picture by using "thick lips" or "the Moor" to show us that Othello is dark skinned.  As a reader, I was already becoming sympathetic to Othello just because of the way Iago was describing him.  Iago takes on villain qualities right from the start of the story.  Like all great villains, he has an axe to grind with the hero.  Iago thinks he should have been promoted and blames Othello for passing him over.

Iago takes great pride in being the villain.  Like all great supervillains, he thinks that he is smarter than everybody else in the story.  He loves to demonstrate his intellect by showing the reader that he knows exactly what will happen.  He has everything all figured out.  Because of the way he is plotting his revenge, we have another situation of dramatic irony just like in Oedipus.  Iago is proud of his plotting and it is clear he will let nothing stand in his way in his quest for power.  He practically delivers Othello to Brabanzio after he gets Brabanzio worked up enough.  I just knew that there was going to be a huge fight when Othello and Brabanzio met up.  Imagine my surprise when Othello becomes a different kind of hero.  After being labelled as a savage and a barbarian, Othello has a kind of quiet calmness about it.  He is the personification of restraint.  Instead of the conflict I felt like I had been promised, Othello is skillfully able to avoid it because he is such a natural authoritarian.  Rather than a great fight scence, instead we have to settle for the two men to take their case to the Duke.  Iago, our supervillain, has had his initial plan thwarted.  But anybody who has ever read a comic book knows that he has more plans that he is still waiting to unleash.  The play may be called Othello, but so far it is Iago's story that has drawn my interest.

13th Warrior

The 13th Warrior makes a decent film version of the main events in Beowulf.  If you are looking, you can find most of the things that are important in the story.  But unlike the story, this Beowulf never reaches old age.  I enjoyed seeing a visual representation of Beowulf and he did look much like I imagined.  One of the main differences I noticed was that this version of Beowulf was neither Batman nor Superman.  This Beowulf was merely a man.  A great warrior of a man, but a man nonetheless.  His warrior exploits met my expectations until his confrontation where he was poisoned.  It was hard to see the great Beowulf killed by a young woman.  I realize that he killed her, but it seemed to me that a warrior of Beowulf's stature should have never allowed her to get close enough to poison him.  Unlike the story version, I don't think this Beowulf entered into the encounter expecting to lose his life.  But, even though his demise was already assured, it did lead to his great victory in the final battle.  When I reflect on the movie, the picture in my mind that I am most likely to remember is Beowulf sitting on his throne dead.

I read up some on the movie and it appears that there is an even better version of the story on some reels in Hollywood somewhere.  The director John McTiernan (also directed Predator and Die Hard) turned in a cut that was about two hours and fifteen minutes long.  It didn't test well, so they fired him and brought in Michael Crichton to do some reshoots and cut down the length of the film.  Most people who have seen both cuts seem to enjoy the original cut more and say that it is more faithful to the Beowulf story. 

One aspect of the movie I particularly enjoyed was the fleshing out of the other warriors that traveled with Beowulf.  It was nice to see their personalities and see how fiercely loyal they were to their leader.  These were clearly examples of his followers from the stories where he fought Grendel and Grendel's mother.  These hardened warriors would have followed him to Hell if he would have asked.  I found it interesting that Antonio Banderas's character had that same type of loyalty.  He was not one of Beowulf's warriors and he had to have known that there was a good chance he wouldn't be coming back from the invasion of the enemy's lair.  I thought that having the teller of the story participate in the adventure was a nice change from the original Beowulf story we read.  I like seeing the story from a particular point of view instead of just from some narrator who is all knowing.  All in all, it wasn't a bad adaptation, but I do wish I could see the original cut some day.

More Beowulf

I have a real interest in the fact that there is not much background info on the Beowulf story.  Since only one copy was found, we don't even know whether or not it was famous.  Mr. B will probably appreciate this, but I can't help but envision a scenario where this was some monk who used his writing as a release from his normal life.  Maybe he was the original comic book junky who tried to find an outlet for his creative side while obeying his oath to God.  It could even be that maybe he wrote this thing and never let anybody else see it.  Emily Dickinson wrote over 1800 poems, but fewer than a dozen were ever published during her lifetime.  Plus, those that were had significant alterations to meet the standards of the day.  Maybe the Beowulf author was like Emily.  We assume that this was a fairly well know tale of its time, but there is just no way of knowing for sure.

The Batman vs. Superman discussion in class really got me thinking about Beowulf in a new way.  I hadn't really thought about whether or not he was like one or the other.  I never really thought about the fact that he might not be a normal man.  I know he did some superhuman type of things, but I dismissed those as being the tall tales that legends are made of.  To be Superman, he would clearly have to be superhuman.  I know that Mr. B is like me in Batman being his favorite because he used to think that anybody could be Batman.  He doesn't believe that any more, but I'm not willing to give up on that scenario.  Now clearly I can't be Batman, but maybe a really dedicated son of a billionaire could be.  He could arm himself with all of the gadgets he would need and he could train in all sorts of martial arts to become a champion in that arena as well.  The hard part would really be keeping his identity a secret.  With today's facial recognition software even Batman couldn't keep Batman's identity a secret.  That said, I see Beowulf as the Batman of his day.  Instead of going after criminals, he defended his people against the monsters of the time.  They didn't have supervillains (or if they did, we don't know about it), so he defended them against the things that upset the status quo.  He was clearly a champion's champion and someone that people could easily respect.

Beowulf didn't have outer space rocks to weaken him.  Instead it just took the good old fashioned aging process.  He still could do more in his senior years than anybody else could in their prime.  Even though he had lost a step, he was still more than able to defeat the dragon which the author seems to portray as his greatest opponent.  I think Beowulf was expecting the fight to be his last one and he probably knew that he was unlikely to survive the battle.  He went out on his own terms and while his people were worse off for it, he did what he had to do.  It is just by chance that this story survives today, but as it clearly serves as a model for many of the comic book heroes that our society spends big dollars watching in movies.  Who knows what kind of entertainment we would have without Beowulf being in our lives?  It makes our world more interesting, and we are all probably better off for it.

Beowulf (Fate Again?)

Beowulf is perhaps the greatest hero we have covered so far this semester.  In his first two adventures, he established himself as a true hero by defeating Grendel and his mother.  While they were great victories, they happened so quickly that he really didn't have much time to show maturity and moral development.  That is what makes his final adventure against the dragon so memorable.  Fifty years after the previous adventures, we get to see a wiser individual who is still strong enough to get the job done even in old age.

The structure for the final part of his story was quite a bit different than the first two parts.  While we were kind of in the moment during his fights with Grendel and Grendel's mother, in this one we have a lot of flashbacks that show Beowulf's development as a leader.  We start fifty years after his previous victories, but by the end of the story we have pretty much been able to piece together all of the main events over the fifty year gap.  I was particularly impressed with how Beowulf didn't immediately make a grab for the throne when Hygelac died.  He did the proper thing and supported the rightful heir to the throne.  We have already established that Beowulf was a great warrior and he probably wouldn't have had any problem taking over the kingdom through conquest.  I think this showed great restraint on Beowulf's part and I'm not sure that many of the other characters we have covered would have done it the same way.

It is interesting to see Beowulf's development into a great king.  By waiting for the chance to be king, he prooved himself worthy of being king.  That is why it is particularly interesting to see how it all ends for Beowulf.  He has showed great wisdom throughout the story right up until he fights the dragon.  The story does a great job at telling how a king must ignore his own glory and do right by the people.  Beowulf had already shown to be a great hero during his warrior days.  He knows the responsabilities of being king and yet he chooses to ignore them.  It is a rather unusual decision for him to fight the dragon in light of his knowledge about what his death might mean for his people.  His death leaves them without a true leader and might signal an end to their kingdom.

Was the fight with the dragon fated to happen?  Did Beowulf have no choice in the matter at all?  It certainly seems like fate plays a big role in the end of his story.  Beowulf clearly sees his time on Earth is coming to an end.  Therefore, maybe he sees the conflict with the dragon to be inevitable.  He doesn't have the strength that he used to have and thus the dragon has time to inflict a fatal blow on Beowulf before Beowulf's fatal blow to the dragon.  Beowulf has won his people a great treasure, but at what cost?  In the end, despite his wisdom, he was unable to escape the warrior culture that dominated his early life.

The third part of the story really had a movie quality to it.  The dragon part reminded me of Reign of Fire.  Beowulf's final battle reminded me of the early 70s western The Wild Bunch.  In that film, a bunch of aging gunfighters know that their time and era in the old west has come to an end and they go out in a blaze of glory by shooting it out with an entire army surrounding them.  Perhaps this is what Beowulf was thinking when he challenged the dragon.  His time was at an end and he was going to go out in one last blaze of glory.

By defeating the dragon he was able to show his people that the old man had a little bit of greatness left in him still.  His followers didn't believe it anymore since all except for Wiglaf left him during the fight.  This was a real contrast to how they all stood and waited during his fight with Grendel's mother.  Beowulf was a champion again and died right after the battle.  This is kind of like a quarterback winning the Super Bowl and retiring after the game.  Maybe he was fated to have one more championship before his death.

Beowulf and the Danish Mercy Rule

Why is it that so many of these heroes we have read about make their lives so much harder than they need to be?  Plenty of the heroes we have covered in class could go through their lives with very few challenges.  They are all so incredibly awesome that the only strife they get comes from what they make themselves.  Now I know in today's competitive world that many people like a challenge.  Perhaps that is what draws so many Americans to different sporting events.  Back in the fifth or sixth century, people couldn't go watch two teams settle their differences on the field.  Even though they went to their version of a sports bar, there were no televisions to watch.

Beowulf kind of represents the heavyweight champion of the times.  Even though he was coming off of a loss, he still considered himself the greatest.  In truth, he probably was the greatest.  At least he didn't suffer from the false modesty of some of our other heroes this semester.  It really appears that there is very little that Beowulf couldn't do.  Perhaps that it why Beowulf embarked on a "world tour."  After his adventures at sea he headed to Denmark to take on the local champion Grendel.  Grendel was no slouch, since he could devour Hrothgar's men with little trouble.  Plus he was certainly irritable enough to bring his A game to the fight.  To the average observer, this fight might have been rated a pick em'.  But, Beowulf knew better.

Beowulf knew why he lost his last battle and he knew it was time to regain his reputation.  Grendel seemed like a perfect foe to help Beowulf regain his previous status.  In fact, a big victory in this battle was bound to take his reputation to previously unseen heights.  But Beowulf was pretty crafty.  He knew that no one can get a big reputation by a quick win.  He knew that everybody needs for their opponents to be perceived as being good so that the win looks even better.  So Beowulf did his best to even the fight up a little bit.  Beowulf removed his armour so that he could make the battle a little more even.

Beowulf's men think that maybe he has met his match since they try and assist him.  However, since their weapons can't pierce Grendel's skin, Beowulf is really forced to win this one on his own.  Eventually, after a fierce battle where it looks like the whole hall will be destroyed, Beowulf rips Grendel's arm off and the beast retreats to the marshes to die.  Beowulf is once again the champion and his reputation has reached new heights.  But, in a little bit of foreshadowing of the future to come with WWE, Beowulf then has to defeat Grendel's mother.  I can almost see this event on television.  Just like the wrestlers of today, some woman comes out of the crowd and hits our champion with a chair.  Despite the woman getting the quick advantage, we have all seen it happen enough to know how it is going to end.  This same story has played out hundreds or even thousands of times since Beowulf's days.  Despite that, Beowulf is still clearly awesome because the Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, or even Hulk Hogan never ripped off one of their opponent's arms.

Women's Lib in Chaucer's England

The Wife of Bath was not the same type of woman we have been reading about in our other stories.  She does not seem to buy into the fact that women are of secondary importance when compared to men.  This view seems to be so contrarian to the rest of the literature we have studdied this year.  Most of the few women that we have read about don't have any real ambitions for themselves.  Their views of their place in society come from the status of their husbands.  Clearly these type of views don't represent the Wife of Bath.  Thus, if Chaucer based her on a real person then that women was an early leader in the women's movement.

Although we are not reading all of Canterbury Tales in this class, it is noteworthy that there are real differences between the prologue and story of the Wife of Bath and most of the other stories in Chaucer's book.  The main change is that the Wife of Bath's tale matches her prologue.  She has a certain opinion that she basically spells out in her prologue and then has a story which reinforces her beliefs.  Many of the other stories in Chaucer's work don't have that same format.  Many of them seem to be told out of spite in response to the other stories that have already been told.  The whole contest seems to become a case of oneupsmanship (is that a word?) over the course of their pilgrimage to Canterbury.

It is really pretty refreshing to see the Wife of Bath stay on point in her attempts to educate her fellow travelers.  The views she presents in her prologue and story would be beyond controversial for the day.  It is great that she is able to weave them into a couple of different stories without making them really personal.  Just like Chaucer doesn't own his views by saying the whole book was something he overheard on his trip to Canterbury, the Wife of Bath doesn't own her views by saying that these were events that happened a long time ago.  This clever subterfuge allows her to at least get people thinking about the things that she finds important in getting women fair and equal treatment with men.

It is probably worth noting that she doesn't seek just equality for women.  In truth, it appears that she finds women superior to men.  This would have been an even more radical idea for the times.  While we will never know the answer, it would sure be interesting to know if Chaucer based this character on a real woman in his life.  The ideas that the Wife of Bath presented in her story and prologue are not used throughout the rest of the tales, so Chaucer did a great job of making his novel feel like it really did have different voices telling the stories.  Since the work was never finished, we don't know which story would have won the contest, but it seems pretty likely that the stories and views of theWife of Bath would not have been a contender.  But, it does allow the readers of today see some of the initial sparks of the women's liberation movement that was to come.

Oedipus and Fate

Fate was a central part of many Greek tragedies of the time.  Even in a play like Oedipus where the "Hand of God" doesn't come in at the finish, it is obvious that Sophocles believes in fate.  When I read this, I was really trying to figure out what Sophocles wanted to say about fate.  Oedipus was not a new story and the audience was well versed in the history.  In fact, Aeschylus had won the first prize at the festival of Dionysus with his own trilogy about Oedipus.  So what is it that Sophocles felt he had that was new to bring to the tale?

Since Sophocles clearly believes in fate, it must be something about the choice of either accepting or fighting your fate.  In Sophocles' play, all parties that have a choice between accepting or fighting fate choose to fight.  First, it is the parents of Oedipus who abandon their child and have him left to die.  Many years later, it is Oedipus himself who flees his home in an attempt to make sure that he doesn't fulfill the prophecy.  I can't help but read into this that Greeks, while believing in fate, did not believe that they had to accept it.  Sophocles clearly makes a statement by having his characters attempt to fight their fate.

Another part that really interested me was the fact that Sophocles chose not to have the Greek gods as major characters in his play.  While we have prophets and oracles operating in the world of Oedipus, the actual gods are nowhere to be found.  I wonder if this wasn't some subtle hint on Sophocles' part to have people question their gods.  Clearly that is not the way most people interpret it, but just about every other play I have read from the era has gods as central characters.  Most have them come on at the end to finish the play.  But in Sophocles' Oedipus, the play ends with Oedipus blinded and leaving the city.  Could this be a case of saying that we are all are own gods?  Oedipus does fulfill the prophecy, but the reprecussions for his actions do not involve him being punished by the gods.  His reprecussions are brought on entirely by himself.  He scratches out his own eyes and he makes the choice to abandon his children.  Now I know that Sophocles mentioned that Thebes was suffering from a plague because of the unsolved murder of their king, but the gods knew the identity of the murderer.  There would have been no reason to punish the population if they knew how everything was going to end, so maybe there was some subtle subtext at play where Sophocles was asking bigger questions about Greek beliefs.

Is Neo The One? Does It Matter?

This was about the fifteenth time I have seen the Matrix, but it was the first time I had seen it after learning about daoism.  So, this was really like seeing it for the first time.  I found that the subtitles being on really helped me to read it on the first day.  I wish we would have had them on for the second part of the film because without them I did find myself getting into the action a little more and forgetting why we were there.  After viewing the film, I am still pretty sure that I don't understand daoism.  I probably understand the film a lot more than I understand the philosophy.

The key point for our heroic journey is whether or not Neo is the one.  Now clearly he is the protagonist of the film, but does that necessarily make him a hero?  If we view the film like the other stories that we have been reading, we really need to make a decision on our feelings about Neo being the one.  I believe in the realm of the film that Neo is clearly the one.  The oracle never says it specifically, but she pretty much says that if he is not the one now, he will be the one later.  Since we know she told Morpheous that he would find the one, we can extrapolate that Neo is either the one, or Morpheous is going to live for a very long time since Neo will have to be in another life to be the one. 

Now some in class claim that Neo is in another life when he becomes the one since he has died and risen (Matrix Messiah?).  But, I think it is clear to see that this is still our Thomas Anderson.  Neo is the one because he has always been the one.  It is true that he doesn't really achieve his full capabilities as a hero until he believes in himself, but it doesn't change the fact that he was always the one and our hero.  By the end of the film, I am still not sure that Neo believes he is the one, but he clearly believes he has a role to play in saving the world.

Neo's journey is not unlike some of the others we have read in class this semester.  Neo sort of leaves his home and goes on a heroic journey before returning home.  Now for Neo, his original home existed only in his mind and he was never aware that anything else was out there.  I am not sure how he returns to his home knowing what he knows by the end.  Now that he has achieved "knowledge," it would be pretty tough to go home again.  Just like Sir Gawain came home with a badge of failure, Neo seems to have one too.  Although he doesn't project it on how he sees himself in the matrix, he does have the holes in his body where the feeding tubes were connected while he was in an unconscious state.  When he is outside the realm of the matrix, I think he could easily view these as a badge of failure because he never recognized his true existence before Morpheous opened his eyes.

Now that I've established my view that Neo is the one, the next big question is whether or not it matters.  What we don't know from watching the film is the ultimate end game.  Will Neo single handedly awaken every human in the world from their sleep?  Will he succeed in eliminating all of the machines that are running the "real" world?  What is the ultimate end goal?  It certainly seems like Neo has a long way to go if he is going to be the one to lead all people to the truth.  That being said, it is clear that he has more heroic journeys ahead.  The daoists in our other readings generally did not seem to seek that kind of excitement in their lives so I don't know whether they would even approve of Neo trying to be the one.  Perhaps they would have been more comfortable with him taking the other pill.  Ignorance is probably not ever bliss, but it can lead to a happier existence and if the end game for everyone is to live a happy life, then Neo clearly chose the wrong pill.

Daoism or How to Live in a World Without Consequence

After reading the Daoism part of our book it is easy for me to see why Eastern writings are not as often studdied as the more familiar Western texts we were all exposed to in high school.  This is just a completely different animal than anything I had read before.  I'm not sure I can even compare it to the similar literature being produced in the West during the same time frames.  I really feel that it just didn't respect me as a reader.  I truly wish I had those two hours of my life back.

Was it a success for me?  No, it was an unsuccess or a nonsuccess, I'm not really sure which.  I would say it was a failure, but Daoism won't let me.  I take that back.  I guess I can call it a failure, but then if it truly were successful, then it could only be a nonfailure.  It either is or isn't.  It is never opposite because apparently opposites don't really exist.  Everything I thought I knew about the world, I don't.  Do I know nothing or non-nothing?  I can't be an optimist or a pessimist, I can only be an optimist or a non-optimist. 

It might be a great thing to live in a world without labels and opposites, but does that even really exist in the Eastern school of thought.  I have a feeling these things exist, Daoists just choose to ignore them.  To Daoists, do smart people even exist?  Or are they merely not stupid?  If I break a law, am I a lawbreaker, or a non rule follower?  How can I face consequences for my actions when what I am doing isn't wrong?  It is merely not right and the right things are merely not wrong.  But, just because I am doing non rights doesn't mean I am doing wrongs, and just because I am doing non wrongs doesn't mean I am doing right.  It sure is easy to follow, isn't it?

This appears to be a great way of life to embrace if you don't like consequences.  There is always a way to excuse your shortcomings.  Nothing in your life will be a weakness, it will merely be a non strength.  In today's United States where everybody plays the blame game (as in blaming everybody else for your problems), I can't believe that this philosophy is not the dominant one in North America.  Things are the way are because that is the way it is.  We are not responsible for our own actions, we are merely responsible for our own non action or some kind of combination like that.  In all of the double speak, it is pretty easy to get lost.

The way to Oz isn't a path paved with yellow bricks, it is merely covered with non red bricks.  The Boston Red Sox don't have the Green Monster at Fenway Park, they just have the Non Brown Non Human at Fenway Park.  I would have loved to have embraced this in high school, but I don't think my parents would have allowed it.  I am truly not a Daoist because I just don't get it.  My path to heaven will just have to be paved with good intentions, or at least non-bad intentions, and if I end up in Hell, I can just take pride in the fact that it is just non Heaven.

Who is the Real Hero of the Story?

I am going to go against the grain once again to point out that I think the Green Knight is the hero of the story.  I know that Gawain gets top billing and fits all of the stereotypes of the hero, but ponder a few things.  Gawain is somewhat flawed as a hero.  Near as I can tell from sifting through the language of the story, it is quite possible he violated all five of his knightly virtures.  This is not to say that Gawain isn't trying, he just isn't succeeding.  For those of you that are keeping score at home, the five knightly virtues are courtesy, chastity, piety, generosity and friendship.  If you examine Sir Gawain's actions in the story, you can question whether any of the virtues come through unscathed.

Let's contrast Gawain's actions with those of the Green Knight.  The Green Knight, though not a member of King Arthur's round table, adheres to the knightly virtues much better than Sir Gawain.  Now maybe it is because he is supernatural and knows exactly what is going to take place in the future; but I like to believe that it is because he holds the same type of values that the knights of Camelot aspire to hold.  For the Green Knight it comes naturally and he is able to succeed where Gawain fails. 

The great examples of knightly virtues in the story are the two covenants negotiated by the Green Knight and Sir Gawain.  Both of these seem to give Sir Gawain the upper hand.  It is obvious to the casual observer that Gawain is in the superior position in both deals.  In the first, he can kill the Green Knight (or so he thinks) without ever having to face the prospect of losing his head in return.  I just don't see anything noble about beheading a defenseless man.  The Green Knight exposes his neck willingly and Sir Gawain swings hard and takes his head right off.  In the second covenant, Gawain feels like he makes a great deal.  He will be rewarded with the proceeds of the Green Knight's hunts in exchange for perhaps nothing.  All Gawain is doing is lounging around the castle all day.  There is very little way he can not be the beneficiary of this covenant (or so he thinks).

By the end of the story, we can see that despite Sir Gawain's efforts, he has failed in his knightly virtues in both covenants.  I may be stretching a little bit, but it would seem that the generous thing for Gawain to do in the first covenant is to do exactly what the Green Knight did at the end --- swing and nick his opponent rather than taking off his head.  While this would certainly have been a risky play, it does seem appropriate given the situation.  In terms of the second covenant, Sir Gawain had a really easy part to play.  The only thing he needed to do was exchange gifts with his host.  He wasn't able to do this is an honorable way.  He withheld the girdle for personal gain.  After the Green Knight had lavished so much on him, Gawain still chose dishonesty instead of doing the right thing.

At the end of the tale, it is the Green Knight who has represented knightly virtues the best.  He has never violated his word, or behaved in an improper way.  Even after he gave Sir Gawain a chance to show his mettle through a second covenant, Gawain proved to not be up to the task of keeping his word.  Despite that outcome, the Green Knights still sprares Gawain's life.  If that is not heroic behavior, I don't know what is.  The Green Knight continues to shine as a hero because he does not behead Gawain like he could have and maybe should have due to Gawain's failures. 

The Modern World and Love and Forgiveness

This is really a two parter today for my blog.  First, while I didn't enjoy the work much, I would really like to point out how special it is to get to read Kalidasa's story about Sakuntala.  Apparently this play was written sometime between 350-500 C.E. (or A.D. for Mr. Bahlmann).  While it was certainly a celebrated work in India and for practitioners of Hindu everywhere, it wasn't until 1789 that it was translated into English for the first time.  That means that for nearly 1500 years it was impossible for someone who spoke only English to read this story.  It is just amazing to think about someone that was writing his version of a well known story in his area for a performance on stage.  We don't even know how grand a production this was supposed to be.  But, he wrote this play, performed it in front of a group of people over 1500 years ago, and probably never even considered that people from far in the future would still be discussing his work today in a language he never knew existed.  It really is pretty amazing.

On to the second part.  I found it interesting that Sakuntala forgives King Dusyanta as quickly as he shows up.  This is a girl (maybe a woman by the end of the story) who gave up everything important in her life for love.  What was her reward?  She was rejected and denied by her one true love.  Now who hasn't had their heart broken at some point in their life?  When it happens, I think everybody wishes that it was just a bad dream or a mistake which will soon be fixed.  But usually, it just doesn't work out like that.

It is hard for me to understand why Sakuntala allows herself to be taken in by Dusyanta so quickly again.  I know that eventually she learns that King Dusyanta had been cursed, but that comes way after she has already forgive him.  Maybe that really does make her the ideal girl (at least for sadists).  It is lucky that King Dusyanta really does love her, because apparently he can just inflict as much pain and humiliation on her as he wants.  She will keep willingly coming back for more.  Does love mean that you always have to forgive?  Is there no wrong that is too wrong?  I guess in Sakuntala's world the answer is yes to both questions.

I don't know if a version of a story similar to this could be written in the modern world today.  Who would ever believe in a heroine portrayed in such a way?  We have all seen couples in disfunctional relationships where one partner is continually walked over by the other.  However, we don't celebrate it.  The story is what the story is, and Kalidasa probably didn't want to make too many changes to the original plot.  But, I wish that one of the gods would have explained to Sakuntala that she had been cursed by Durvasas.  Maybe then she could have forgiven him and it would have seemed like an outcome that was even possible.  She still couldn't have gone after him without possessing the ring to reveal the truth, but her immediate forgiveness upon seeing him would have held more truth for me.

Sakuntala - Ideal Girl or Homewrecker?

Does beauty trump everything else?  I couldn't help but ask that question while reading Kalidasa's story.  Sure Sakuntala is kind to animals, but other than beauty what else does she really have going for her?  She lives at a hermitage in the forest where she spends her days focussed on the things that are important to her.  She has a few friends, but has never really ventured far enough to see what the world outside her hermitage is like.  We, as readers, never get to know the real Sakuntala.  We don't get to see the things that make her King Dusyanta's ideal girl.

Now the great King Dusyanta who is not only a man of the world, but also its leader, has seen many great things and he has done many great things.  But the minute he sees the young Sakuntala, he immediately falls in love.  Now this must mean that beauty is the single most important factor in judging people.  What else could he possibly be using to judge her?  He has had no interaction with her.  He doesn't know anything else about her, except for the fact that she likes animals.

I must admit that I am not someone who believes in love at first sight.  But even if you take my personal bias out of the equation, it is very hard to see what King Dusyanta must see in Sakuntala other than her beauty.  I certainly believe in attraction at first sight, but I think that is quite a different thing than falling head over heels in love with a person.  Within seconds of first seeing her, King Dusyanta is willing to give up almost everything he holds dear to love her.  He no longer worries about his responsabilities back in the capitol including his current wives. 

Now clearly this story still has relevance in modern times.  King Dusyanta is not the first man, nor will he be the last, to forget all about his current family when he sees a pretty face.  But doesn't the King get to see a lot of pretty faces?  What makes Sakuntala so special?  Unfortunately readers will never know the answer.  We don't know whether or not he has an unhappy life with his other wives.  We don't know if he just has a thing for young girls.  What we do know is that after just one look, nothing in his world is as important to him as Sakuntala.

It is a good thing that King Dusyanta lived in a time before the Indian tabloids really got going.  Can you imagine the field day that tabloid reporters would have with a married King seducing one of the underage daughters of one of the country's religious leaders?  I'm sure the Indian version of Inside Edition would have nightly coverage of the story.  People would be demanding that the government have the King arrested.  Luckily for Dusyanta, he lived in different times.

Gilgamesh as Revisionist History

Like many works of classic literature, Gilgamesh is said to be based on a real person with a real history.  After all, he is named as one of the kings on the historical rolls and served his kingdom for 126 years according to the Sumerian king list.  Now I think we can all agree that there is no way that Gilgamesh was a god, or even part god and it is highly unlikely his reign spanned that kind of timeframe.  People of ancient times liked to think that their rulers were gods because they hoped that it gave their people favor over competing entities in the ancient world.  But let's just take a moment to examine all of the things that supposedly made Gilgamesh great, and a king worth remembering.

1)  Gilgamesh built a wall around the city (or rather he supervised the building of a wall around the city).
2)  Enkidu and Gilgamesh travel to the Cedar Mountain where Gilgamesh slays the monstrous Humbaba.
3)  Gilgamesh, with Enkidu's help, slayed the Bull of Heaven who had been ordered by Ishtar to kill Gilgamesh.
4)  Gilgamesh slays an entire pride of lions all by himself.
5)  Gilgamesh kills the stone giants and single handedly chops down 120 trees in order to cross the Waters of Death.
6)  He finds a legendary plant on the bottom of the sea which will give him immortality.

Now on the surface, these seem like great accomplishments and certainly would make Gilgamesh a king worth remembering.  But let's look at it from the realistic view from the modern world.  Except for the very first thing on the list, there are no witnesses to any of the other events.  Sure Enkidu supposedly saw some take place, but his role as servant or friend (lover?) can certainly put his motivations to tell the truth in question.  At the end of the day, what you really have is a man who supervised the building of a wall and spent some time outside of the city.

An alternate story could be told of a prominant contractor who got tired of his life in the city building fences.  He knows that the people of the city would never approve of his homosexual relationship and he leaves with his lover for a life on the road where they make ends meet doing odd jobs and living off of love.  When his lover gets the AIDS virus, they return to their home city where his lover dies.  Now they both know that Gilgamesh will never be able to find another man that he loves as well as Enkidu, so they concoct this fabulous story to explain where they had been which will allow Gilgamesh to return to his previous life.

Now I don't really believe my alternate story, nor do I believe that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were secret lovers.  But, this story is certainly every bit as plausible as the one told in our text.  The bottom line is that at the end of the day, you have a man who supervised the building of a wall, and there is nothing that is even remotely heroic about that.