Acts of Compassion in Greek Tragic Drama by James Franklin Johnson

Author:James Franklin Johnson [Johnson, James Franklin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2016-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

PHILOKTETES

We may now turn to the role of compassion in Sophokles’ Philoktetes. Because compassion is so integral to the plot of this drama and so fully integrated with other major themes, such as deception, violence, and persuasion, it will be necessary to employ a close reading of the play in order to analyze fully the development of compassion as a theme and as a motivator of action and to demonstrate its relationship to the play’s other major themes. In general, the theme of compassion in this play can be seen as part of the larger issue of man’s treatment of his fellow man or fellow human being. At the end, I provide a concluding analysis of the role of compassion in the play along with a discussion of the meaning of that role. Our primary questions here are: How does compassion function in this play, and what is the meaning of that function?

Almost all critics who have written about the play have remarked on the sympathy aroused by Philoktetes’ suffering and on the role of pity in motivating Neoptolemos’s behavior at various points in the action. In his famous book, Laocoön, first published in 1766, Lessing has given perhaps the most influential account of this theme. He emphasizes the theatrical vividness of Philoktetes’ cries of pain and external wound and brilliantly defends Philoktetes’ intense cries against charges (by Cicero and others) that they are unmanly, violate decorum, or otherwise inhibit the spectator’s sympathy by their sheer intensity. He also describes Neoptolemos and the chorus as bystanders whose responses or lack of response to Philoktetes’ suffering involve the spectator dramatically and distract him from any embarrassment he himself might feel at witnessing such intense expressions of pain.

A number of critics within the last century have seen pity as part of the play’s advancement of a new or unconventional value scheme. Bellinger (1939: 6–8) notes that after having been first schooled by Odysseus and then confronted with Philoktetes, the ambitious young Neoptolemos “is presented with an entirely new set of values in which ambition has no place and justice and mercy bulk inconveniently large.” He sees in Neoptolemos’s decision to take Philoktetes home at the end a sacrifice of “ambition for principle,” which was uncommon in Greek heroes. For Adkins (1960a: 183, 189; 1966: 84–85), Philoktetes advances beyond traditional Greek values in having Neoptolemos choose honest behavior (a cooperative value) over the competitive value of success, although Adkins does not mention pity in this regard. Zanker (1992: 25, n.16) sees in the play a tension between the competitive “victory” standard, represented by the character of Odysseus, and what he describes as the “ultimate” standard of generosity, compassion, and fairness, reflected in the character of Neoptolemos. Rose associates the depiction of pity in the play with the influence on Sophokles of contemporary anthropological theories about the development of the “social compact” in early human society. Easterling (1978) argues, most convincingly, that philia (friendship), coupled with “right action,” is the primary value promoted by the play, that it is “What really matters.

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