Echoes of Sophocles in the Death of a Senator

Immediately after Senator John McCain passed away last Saturday, August 25, controversy swirled. It came from the current commander-in-chief.  The President's advisers counseled him to issue a statement praising McCain as a "hero," but the President instead released a simple Tweet expressing his rather indifferent "sympathies." Another article from the Washington Post captured the significance of the move well in its title, "Trump's not-so-subtle denigration of a dead man." The two men, both Americans, both officials elected to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, ostensibly were on the same side. Animosity between them, however, prevailed.

John Sidney McCain III (1936 - 2018)

Some of the reasons for their animosity are complex, perhaps even principled.  As former Senate colleague and Vice President Joe Biden remarked at a memorial service in McCain's home state of Arizona, "John could not stand the abuse of power wherever he saw it, in whatever form, in whatever country." Some of their reasons were petty.  President Trump disliked McCain for the latter's pointed critiques of his policy.  Even in the wake of McCain's death, the President ordered the American flag raised again to full mast less than 24-hours after it was lowered to half-staff in honor of the fallen warrior and statesman.  Only after public pressure did the President reverse his decision and say that the flag would remain at half-staff until McCain was laid to rest tomorrow, a week after the flag controversy began.

What is telling about the remarks from Biden is that he represents the Democratic Party, but McCain, the Republican Party. On the surface, they should have been at odds, not two fellow Republicans.  Moreover, it should have been the current President of his own party, not the former Vice President of the opposition party, who could sincerely insist, as Biden did, "John was a hero. His character, courage, honor, and integrity. His optimism. That’s what made John special. It made John a giant among all of us."

The affirmation of McCain by Biden in my ear echoed similar comments by Odysseus in Sophocles' Ajax:  "My enemy, it's true.  But he was noble. / ... His greatness weighs more with me than my hate" (ll. 1355, 1357).

Ajax, placing his sword in the ground.

There are, of course, major differences between the circumstances surrounding McCain's and Ajax's deaths, but the point of contact that I wish to highlight is the various characters' responses to it.

In Sophocles' play, Ajax suffers what he believes is dishonor and shame after being passed over in the privilege to receive Achilles' armor, which went to Odysseus instead. This was a mark of Odysseus' worthiness in the eyes of the Greek leaders to carry on the tradition of their finest warrior.  Ajax goes into a rage and plots to kill the leaders of the Greek army because of the slight, which he was prevented from doing only by the bewitching intervention of Athena. After Ajax dies from a self-inflicted wound, first Menelaus and then Agamemnon step forward to prevent his proper burial.  Such a move -- that is, being denied burial -- was in that culture a deep disgrace within the community and carried unsettling consequences for the departed in the afterlife, such as it existed.

The third of the Greek leaders whom Ajax had attempted to destroy was Odysseus, who nevertheless appears and counsels Agamemnon to relent.  Agamemnon is perplexed. In Greek culture, to rejoice over an enemy's death is deemed fitting, and to put an enemy to public shame is part of winning honor for oneself. At the outset of the play, Athena invites Odysseus into a little playful ridicule of the beguiled Ajax and then matter-of-factly asks him rhetorically, "But to laugh at your enemies-- / What sweeter laugher can there be than that?" (ll. 78-79).  So when later Agamemnon asks Odysseus, "But now he is dead, / Shouldn't you rightly trample on his corpse?" (ll. 1347-1348), Agamemnon's rhetorical question has added cultural and moral force.

The unfolding of events and dialogue in Sophocles' drama raises questions about, among other things, the recognition of nobility even among one's enemies.  Another question, similar to that which the final books of Homer's Iliad give shape, is what honors are owed the dead.  Achilles is checked in his hate of Hector, whom he has killed, by Priam's passionate, paternal intercession.  A suggestion of that epic poem's narrative arc is that even by Greek standards such violence as depicted in it was excessive.  Priam persuades Achilles through appeal to their shared humanity, fellow feeling, and the imaginative empathy that comes from thinking through a situation with exchanged eyes.

In the Ajax, something similar seems to be at work within Odysseus.  Early on, in what is a programmatic speech for the rest of the drama, Odysseus replies to Athena, who wishes for Odysseus to ridicule and gloat over the out-of-mind Ajax because of his reversal of fortune:

… Yet I pity
His wretchedness, though he is my enemy,
For the terrible yoke of blindness that is on him.
I think of him, but also of myself;
For I see the true state of all of us that live—
We are dim shapes, no more, and weightless shadows. (Ajax, ll. 121-26; my emphasis)

Odysseus feels that way about Ajax, conflicted, while Ajax lived and his life was threatened by him.  And so when Ajax has died, his pity takes a different form, as he explains to Agamemnon: "I hated him while it was fair to hate" (l. 1346).  Odysseus courageously implores his commander-in-chief,

Don't cast out this brave man's body
Unburied; don't in the gods' name be so hard.
Vindictiveness should not so govern you
As to make you trample on the right. (ll. 1332-1335)

Agamemnon worries that if he consents to honor Ajax with a proper burial he will look weak: "You'll make me look a coward in this transaction" (l. 1362).  Odysseus counters, "Generous, though, as all the Greeks will say. ... However you do it, you will deserve praise" (ll. 1363, 1369).

In the end, Agamemnon relents, but he still does not regard the fallen Ajax as a hero.  He still detests him and thinks only of his own honor, not that of Ajax.  In contrast, Odysseus can say, as noted above, "But he was noble" (l. 1355).

More than two thousand years later, it remains hard for leaders to look past themselves, past their animosities, and say with a sense of shared humanity, "Yet I pity his wretchedness, though he is my enemy." It remains hard to say, "I think of him, but I think also of myself, for I see the true state of all of us that live." It is still a challenge, even after former opponents and critics have died, to confess, "But he was noble." And it is not just leaders in exceptional circumstances who struggle with this.