Avenging Furies, help me,
grave Furies who bestride the world,
forever virgin, who supervise all mortal pain,
witness. The sons of Atreus have destroyed my life
evil for evil, snatch them down to Hell,
let them die as I do now. Come now!
Be quick, be just, and glut yourselves on Greeks.
–Sophocles, Ajax
In his final moments, Ajax sends a prayer to the gods. He laments his fate and prays for a quick death. The quick death is granted sure enough. But there is another part of his prayer. A curse upon the souls of the Greek army who betrayed him. He asks for the just deaths of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The two brothers who are responsible for his first shame, losing the armor of Achilles, that led to his rage and madness, the cause of his second shame.
Agamemnon dies horribly at the hands of his wife upon his return to Argos. His swift return home lends an even more pathetic element to his swift and brutal death. Menelaus we know lives on to old age. His suffering is old age with a woman he knows loves someone else, who would leave him but for force of arms. In a way Ajax does get his wish granted, the sons of Atreus suffer pain and humiliation at least equal to his own.
There is no forgiveness in Ajax. His final prayer is of a man so consumed with pride that even at the moment of his own suicide he thinks only of that. While he recognizes his misery, he fails to learn the true folly of that pride and continues to hope for retribution within a logic system that does not value pride. With his suicide we see a man whose pride quite literally killed him.
I reread the play while Arvo Part’s Sarah Was Ninety Years Old pounds away incessantly. Hollow. Vacant. As I reach the suicide of Ajax, the drums give way to the organ and the sky is opened up in possibility. The drums return, but now transformed. They support the voice calling out with divine grace, the gong beats and silence. The voices return but are in some way almost hidden. They must struggle to be heard. Ethereal. Transformed.
These are Ajax’ last words on earth: whatever else I say only the Dead will hear.
Tags: ajax, death, greek drama
