The fall-out from dissent: hero and audience in Sophocles' Ajax

Abstract

Sophocles' Ajax has long confounded critics. As a study of the great hero figure it has been found wanting, on the basis that Ajax kills himself half-way through the play. On the other hand, the characters left in his wake have been criticised for destroying the tragic gravity by engaging in petty quarrelling over his body. This paper makes sense of the character of Ajax and the structure of the play by pointing to the strong Iliadic resonances at the beginning of the drama, as Ajax plays the role of Achilles going for his sword in anger at Agamemnon in an extreme manifestation of dissent from authority. In Ajax's case, however, Athena does not stay his hand, but rather deflects it so that he experiences the shame of killing cattle and herdsmen. Moreover, the focus even in this opening scene rests with a spectator – Odysseus stands by looking on – rather than with the hero himself as in the Homeric scene. Indeed, the rest of the play examines the fall-out from dissent from the perspective of those dependent on him – his wife, half-brother (Teucer) and men (the Chorus). In this way the double agon, in which Teucer defends the right to bury Ajax in defiance of the authorities, is fundamental to implicating the audience in the process of reassessing Ajax's standing and putting a value on dissent. The shift in focalisation from hero to spectator and the investigation into the problems with, and importance of, dissent suggest one way in which this play performs within the cultural context of Athenian democracy.