It's Universal

One of the characteristics of classic literature, a quality that entitles a work to be included in the accepted canon, is universality. In other words, the work applies to humanity across time. If we read a story today that was written centuries ago, and we can know the characters, recognize their motivations, sympathize with their problems and weaknesses, celebrate their triumphs, mourn their losses, we know that it is great literature. But the older a piece of literature is, the more often people shy away from it, worrying that they will not understand it or feeling that it is impossible for an ancient work to have relevance to them today.

But a project coordinated by Bryan Doerries is illustrating the universality of ancient literature in a surprising way. Inspired by Dr. Jonathan Shay’s book Achilles in Vietnam, in which he argues that theater was used by the Greeks to reintegrate combat veterans into society, Doerries has translated and produced Sophocles’ Ajax and Philocletes as part of a Marine Corp sponsored conference addressing post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety experienced after combat.

Reader of the role of Philocletes, actor David Straithairn of Good Night, and Good Luck fame comments, “I know it’s a bit odd to have Greek plays read to a conference of military people. . . . But you read these plays and you understand they are the first investigations into the condition of war in Western civilization.”

Both plays are stories about soldiers and their struggles adjusting after combat—depression, rage, violence, suicidal tendencies, relationship problems, paranoia. These plays also show the pain that the wives of these soldiers experience as they witness their husbands’ mental and emotional anguish.

The performances earned standing ovations and were followed by discussions lasting almost two hours, as soldiers and their wives used literature written 2500 years ago as a starting point to discuss and deal with their own emotional struggles in the twenty-first century. One woman, the wife of a navy SEAL and mother of a Marine, summed up the literary relevance: “I don’t think much has changed at all.”

Reading about this program started me thinking—maybe we should stage a world-wide reading of Lysistrata.


--For more information about this Marine Corp program, see “Greek tragedies offer modern lesson on pain of war” by Chelsea J. Carter, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Sunday, August 17, 2008, 2A