GIVE-AND-TAKE VS. THE KILLING STROKE

Might is an ability that is superior to great obstacles. It is called dominance [Gewalt] if it is superior even to the resistance of something that itself possesses might.-- Kant, CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT.

Plainly, Kant, in formulating his linked concepts of "might" and "dominance," is never as concerned as I am with sussing out the diverse ways in which two mighty forces may contend to produce the sense of dominance. And at present I now see two major archetypal tropes by which fiction creates the sense of dominance, though to be sure I'm not claiming that the two tropes, that of "give-and-take" and "the killing stroke," are necessarily the only ones.

"Give-and-take" refers to the sort of battles in which at least two entities, both possessed of some analogous level of might, come to blows in some manner as to show that both characters can "dish it out" as well as being able to "take it." In my 2015 essay COMBAT PLAY PT. 4, I correlated the ideal of an equally matched battle as one that depended on the ethic of fair play, whether or not the two fighters both subscribe to that ethic:

 ...the notion of "fair play" becomes important within the sphere of fiction and fantasy, possibly more important than it can ever be in the real world of political negotiation and compulsion. In my own lit-critic cosmos, the ideal of "fair play" assumes the role of "self-limitation" that is, in Nietzsche's philosophy, occupied by "self-overcoming."

In the COMBAT PLAY series I already used images from a Jack Kirby bout between Thor and Ulik, so for variety's sake, this time I'll illustrate with scenes from an analogous fight between THE NEW GODS' hero Orion and his evil half-brother Kalibak:

However, the second archetypal trope has less to do with evenly matched combat than with a character, possesses of some level of personal might, who finds a weakness in a mighty opponent's defenses. In my 2012 essay MIGHT VS. DOMINANCE, I pointed out that in the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD the climax is not one of direct contention:

There is no one-on-one combat as such between the principal heroes and the principal villain in THIEF, as usually takes place in related adventure-films.  Earlier sequences show Jaffar triumphing over the heroes with his magic with no real contest, but when Ahmad and Abu join in flouting his forces with the help of a flying carpet, Jaffar seems to run out of magic and flees, only to receive the same fate most villains get even when they do engage in combat.

In this case, Jaffar is struck down by an arrow, sent from a bow wielded by the film's hero Abu. Some dialogue suggests that the bow's bolts cannot miss when they're aimed at "injustice." In some instances, such as that of Neil Gaiman's protagonist in the novel NEVERWHERE, I've cited examples where a "killing stroke" is brought about by a magic weapon wielded by a subcombative character. However, Abu's combative credentials should prove beyond reproach for most viewers, given the manner in which he overcomes a gigantic spider in an earlier scene.

It may be of some interest that both combative tropes take place in Homer's ODYSSEY. During the imprisonment of Odysseus and his men in the cave of the Cyclops, it's made abundantly clear that even as a group the mortals are unable to battle Polyphemus directly. Thus they come up with a way to wound him that also allows them to escape the cave.

However, should any reader doubt the pugnacity of Odysseus, the epic concludes with the traveler returning to his island home Ithaca, where he, his son Telemachus, and a few other allies decimate the ranks of Penelope's unwanted suitors, who are initially unarmed but who, during the onslaught, do manage to acquire weapons and are able to put up a fight before being slain.

I'll note for the time being that most of the "monster-slaying" films I discussed in the essay WEAKLINGS WITH WEAPONS PT. 3 depended on the monsters being slain in Cyclops-fashion, by some human being who uncovers an Achilles Heel. That said, I usually don't view such works as combative unless they've first depicted some "give-and-take" in which the monster withstands the onslaughts of conventional human weapons.

AN ODYSSEAN ILIAD

Last year I re-read THE ILIAD, as mentioned in my essay AN ILIADIC ODYSSEY, so this year I've done the same for Homer's other great epic, THE ODYSSEY. My focus this time, however, is somewhat different.

In the earlier essay, my main focus was on how both the creator of THE ILIAD and his audience viewed such ideas as glory and the fortunes sent to mortals by the gods. THE ODYSSEY, though, sparks a different vein of thought.

On average I've tended to think of THE ILIAD as more grounded in reality. The Greek gods hover over the events of the Trojan War, subtly influencing the fortunes of the warriors on both sides of the conflict. However, it's easy to imagine the war proceeding roughly the same way if the gods never got involved. In contrast, much of THE ODYSSEY concerns Odysseus' adventures for a decade after the ten-year Trojan War, as he and his sailors attempt to return home but are delayed by all manner of supernatural beings. So THE ODYSSEY seems, from one standpoint, to be more in the vein of all later fantasy-romances, in that the hero's exploits are divorced from ordinary reality. Northrop Frye expressed a similar predilection in his essay "Mouldy Tales," quoted here:

...all critics are either Iliad critics or Odyssey critics. That is, interest in literature tends to center either in the area of tragedy, realism, and irony, or in the area of comedy and romance... Many of our best and wisest critics tend to think of literature as primarily instructive... They feel that its essential function is to illuminate something about life, or reality, or experience, or whatever we call the immediate world outside literature. Thus they tend... to think of literature, taken as a whole, as a vast imaginative allegory, the end of which is a deeper understanding of the nonliterary center of experience... They value lifelike characterization, incidents close enough to actual experience to be imaginatively credible, and above all they value 'high seriousness' in theme...-- Northrop Frye, "Mouldy Tales," A NATURAL PERSPECTIVE, pp. 1-2.

I believe that Frye is basically correct about two opposed conceptions of literary experience. However, the actual structure of Homer's ODYSSEY is not nearly as invested in pure fantasy as one might think.

For one thing, the epic's structure mitigates against such investment. The first part of THE ODYSSEY focuses upon the consequences of Odysseus' long absence to his household on Ithaca. There his faithful wife Penelope continually puts off other noble suitors, while her nearly adult son Telemachus chafes at the suitors' abuse of the hospitality customs. The gods themselves are seen in Olympus, just as they are in THE ILIAD, but they're less concerned here with meting out merciless fate and more with assisting the hero in his troubles. Athena, more than any other deity, intervenes to succor both Telemachus and his father, but she doesn't produce a lot of extravagant miracles. Most of the really extraordinary myth-events seem to have happened long ago, like Menelaus relating how he wrestled the sea-god Proteus.

The second part of THE ODYSSEY contains all the metaphenomenal elements for which the epic is justly famous. The hero is condemned to be kept away from his home by the will of Poseidon after Odysseus blinds the savage Cyclops, though a lot of the beings he encounters-- a tribe of cannibals, sea monsters, the sirens, and two separate demi-goddesses-- impinge upon Odysseus and his men with no particular reference to Poseidon's will. Still, a lot of this fantastic material is played down in the Robert Fitzgerald translation, particularly the adventure of the lotus-eaters, which is completed in a few lines. Further, the reader does not experience any of these wild adventures in "real time," for all of them are related by Odysseus to his hosts the Phaecians.

Finally, the third part mirrors the structure of the first part: though Athena intervenes in very minor ways, the author focuses upon the realistic details of Odysseus' incognito return to Ithaca. Homer goes into scrupulous detail about the way ordinary life is experienced on the hero's island home, from the pecking-order of the local beggars to the way the household is run in Odysseus' absence. The final battle of Odysseus and his son against the villainous suitors is as bloody as anything in THE ILIAD, and the remainder of the novel concerns the hero proving his identity to his wife and his father through reference to their shared history.

Strangely for an epic with so much fantastic material, THE ODYSSEY seems to have even more investment in what Frye calls "life-like characterization," in part because the epic's concerns are so far from the world of warriors dying for glorious repute. I would agree with Frye that THE ILIAD is more openly "instructive" as to the ethical message it seeks to oonvey, and therefore the critic is justified in speaking of "Iliadic critics" as being more invested in "imaginative allegory." That said, THE ODYSSEY is not as deeply invested in what Frye deems the stance of the "Odyssean critic," in the "escapist" mythoi of comedy and romance. That total investment into the mode of the romance might actually be better represented by earlier epics like that of Gilgamesh, or later ones like the Argonautica and the Mahabharata.

AN ILIADIC ODYSSEY

I'd been meaning to re-read Homer's ILIAD for some time, and it happened that I had the chance to do so following my re-reading of Shakespeare's TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, discussed here.

My first thought is that although I contrasted Homer's original account of the Achilles-Hector duel with Shakespeare's ironic rewriting of the event, the prose account I excerpted doesn't allude to one important aspect of the fight: that Hector loses in large part because Zeus wants Achilles to win. The two warriors exchange blows and fail to inflict telling wounds. According to translator Richard Lattimore, Hector, wearing the armor of Achilles stolen from Patroklus, charges the Greek warrior. Achilles, who knows the armor well, hits a weak point and wounds Hector. The Trojan pleads to have his body ransomed, but Achilles mercilessly kills him. Later the Greek degrades Hector's body for several days before the Trojan king Priam succeeds in ransoming the corpse from Achilles.

Throughout the conflict, the gods perform many tricks to keep the Greeks on the defensive, and even to keep any other Greek hero from performing Achilles' destined deed of slaying Hector. (At one point, it looks like the Greek Ajax might be able to take Hector, but since this would ruin the story, the gods intervene to save Hector's life.)

Now, from one standpoint the idea of the Greek deities rigging the fight might seem to be no different than Shakespeare's revision, in which Hector is caught without armor and slain by Achilles' troop of warriors. But there's a world of difference between an inequity between men-- which is what Shakespeare presents-- and one between men and gods. There's nothing equitable about the way the gods treat mortals, but to an archaic Greek, this would just be the nature of things. By the very nature of the gods, they send mortals both good and bad fortune, and when it's the latter, mortals can only face their fate with as much courage as possible. Hector's evil fate, of course, mirrors the prophecies of Achilles' own impending downfall, not seen in Homer's epic but repeatedly referenced through prophetic allusions.

Prior to the discovery of other, older heroic epics, the ILIAD seemed to be the oldest extant version of a legendary battle between destined opponents. Various myth-fragments referenced battles that took place long before the Trojan War, not least Zeus' combat with Typhon. The ILIAD mentions most of the most famous Greek heroes of olden days: Heracles, Jason, Bellerophon. But these fragments of religious myths can't be considered art as such, whereas Homer's epic is, like the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first flowerings of narrative art that is not purely religious in nature.

While discussing the book with friends, I was amazed that they had no real regard for the greatness of either Achilles' deed or those of other warriors, such as Ajax and Diomedes. Over and over, they insisted on reading the inequitable actions of the Greek gods as being no more than metaphors for human propaganda, of the tendency of human leaders to con young people into giving their lives in the name of glory. But this overlooks the fact that war is, as often as not, a response to the inequities of fate. Fate often gives one tribe riches and another impoverishment. and to the extent that the second tribe loves life as much as the first, the impoverished ones are thus more likely to risk their lives for gain and for glory-- which can be, but are not always, interdependent. I'm not saying here that human beings don't go to war for bad reasons; obviously they do. But the idea that war is always wrong-- or even always avoidable-- is one of the key mistakes of the Neopuritan liberal.

THE TOILS OF TROILUS

In MYTHOS AND MODE PT. 3, I spoke of three principal ways in which a given work failed to achieve the combative mode despite having some of the requisite elements, and I used one Shakespeare play as an example of each of the three. One way was exemplified by TITUS ANDRONICUS, which had both the necessary narrative and significant elements but simply chose not to resolve the conflict in a combative manner: I might call this the "diffuse type." Another path was exemplified by HAMLET, which had the narrative elements but not the significant ones relating to character-dynamicity, while the last was exemplified by CORIOLANUS, which had the significant elements but not the narrative ones. The third choice is one in which the main character and his enemy possess great dynamicity and seem to be building to a major combative resolution, but chose to frustrate that potential.

I recently reread TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, a play written about three to five years before CORIOLANUS. I remembered nothing about the play from whenever I last read it. Yet I decided, given my earlier statements on Shakespeare's proclivities for fictive violence, that I should re-read it, at least partly because the play's actions takes place during the action of the Trojan War. According to one source, the classic work most associated with that conflict, Homer's ILIAD, had not been fully translated into English when the Bard wrote his play. Thus it's hard to know if he knew more than generalities about parts of Homer's plot-action. Further, neither of the characters in the title-- two young Trojans in love (hmm, that sounds strange)-- appears in Homer. Both were born from medieval accretions to the main tale, accretions continued by authors ranging from Boccaccio to Chaucer, and since the story had proved popular in Shakespeare's time the Bard apparently chose to try his hand at the legend.

(Note: although Cressida does not appear in Homer, she's probably derived from the character Chryses, a prophet's daughter claimed by Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces battling Troy. When circumstances make it necessary for Agamemnon to return Chryses to her father, he then swipes another "spoils of war" female from his subordinate warrior Achilles, and this leads to Achilles' famous reluctance to continue pressing the fight against the warriors of Troy.)

TROILUS has two plot-threads. One, dealing with the Trojan lovers, demonstrates no more narrative potential for the combative mode than does ROMEO AND JULIET. The other is nothing less than the quintessential combative moment of THE ILIAD: the duel between Achilles and Hector that, in Homer, marks the beginning of the end for Troy.  Toward the end of the play, main character Troilus does take the field and fights a warrior or two,  but he really has nothing to do with Shakespeare's (probable) attempt to one-up Homer by destroying the integrity of the Achilles-Hector battle. Here's a prose translation of the relevant scene from Homer:

Now, the fine bronze armour he stripped from mighty Patroclus when he killed him covered all Hector’s flesh except for one opening at the throat, where the collarbones knit neck and shoulders, and violent death may come most swiftly. There, as Hector charged at him, noble Achilles aimed his ash spear, and drove its heavy bronze blade clean through the tender neck, though without cutting the windpipe or robbing Hector of the power of speech. Hector fell in the dust and Achilles shouted out in triumph: ‘While you were despoiling Patroclus, no doubt, in your folly, you thought yourself quite safe, Hector, and forgot all about me in my absence. Far from him, by the hollow ships, was a mightier man, who should have been his helper but stayed behind, and that was I, who now have brought you low. The dogs and carrion birds will tear apart your flesh, but him the Achaeans will bury.’

And now here's Shakespeare's reworking:

ACT V SCENE VIII	Another part of the plains.
[Enter HECTOR]
HECTOR	Most putrefied core, so fair without,
	Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.
	Now is my day's work done; I'll take good breath:
	Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death.
[ Puts off his helmet and hangs his shield behind him ]
[Enter ACHILLES and Myrmidons]
ACHILLES	Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;	5
	How ugly night comes breathing at his heels:
	Even with the vail and darking of the sun,
	To close the day up, Hector's life is done.
HECTOR	I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greek.
ACHILLES	Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek.	10
[HECTOR falls]
	So, Ilion, fall thou next! now, Troy, sink down!
	Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.
	On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,
	'Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.'

So, in essence, Shakespeare undercuts all the glory and honor associated with the great duel-- though, to be sure, Homer seems quite aware of the innate brutality of the war itself-- and makes Achilles into a honorless dog who orders his personal guards, the Myrmidons, to chop down Hector when the latter has partly doffed his armor.

There's a lot of other support for the notion that Shakespeare meant to vilify the very idea of Classical Greece's idea of heroes and their heroic deeds, but I don't mean to explore that here. My main concern is to locate this Shakespeare play within the sphere of the playwright's handling of violent conflicts, and thus I find that TROILUS AND CRESSIDA follows the same pattern as CORIOLANUS, of which I wrote:

CORIOLANUS was my choice for a play that had the potential for the significant combative value, in that its opposed characters Coriolanus and Aufidius were both portrayed as exceptional warriors seen lusting to kill each other at the play's outset.  However, because the play's plot does not end with a combat between these two well-matched characters, CORIOLANUS is not combative in the narrative sense.

I'll forego further comment on the play, except to say that it strikes me as a play in which the writer's desire to satirize something he didn't like-- in this case, the general macho swaggering of the Greeks, and even Troilus's male chauvinism-- but without managing to bring any of his satirical characters to the semblance of life. By comparison, CORIOLANUS is much more successful on a roughly similar theme. The Roman general of the play's title is also something of an egotistical butthead, but he's a much more nuanced character than any of those in TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.