Ajax

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he wrote "Ajax" and "Hecuba" plays. a Greek tragedian whose work has survived. He was the most-feted playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. His most famous plays (Theban plays)were "Oedipus" and "Anitgone".

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Sophocles

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the central event in ancient Athens in which the performance of tragedies and comedies were held. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies and allies in order to promote a common cultrual identity

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City of Dionysia, Athenian Tragedy

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in "The Odyssey", she steers the plot from beginning to end. And in "Ajax", she is the "guardian" of Odysseus who, as her human protege, personifies cunning intelligence and adaptablility

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Athena

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Odysseus' pity v. Athena's persuasion to laugh at Ajax. Ajax speaks to his young son Eurysaces and hands his famous shield to him before committing suicide. Eurysaces appears as a young child in "Ajax" and at the end of which Teucer (his Uncle) has been ordered by his brother (Ajax) to bring him to his grandfather, Telemon, in Salamis

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Odysseus

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Ajax's wife, says "have pity" and fails to convince Ajax not to commit suicide. It shows a conflict between what Ajax is and what he should be. Many argue that she wasn't able to get thru to him because she can't relate to what Ajax has been through

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Ajax's and Tecmessa's contest over suicide

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He is the father of Ajax. In "Ajax", Telamon is an old man whose sorrow the chorus poignantly imagines at the news of his son's death. Teucer is Ajax's half brother who is very skilled with the bow and founder of Salamis.

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Telamon and Teucer

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He is the Greek commander at Troy; king of Sparta; younger son of Atreus.

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Menelaus

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commander-in-chief of the Greek army at Troy; elder son of Atreus. Both of them are brothers whom Ajax curses along with the whole Greek army right before he commits suicide

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Agamemnon

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Ajax's failure to win the contest for Achilles' armor has caused the collapse of his world. The Homeric code of earning honor, respect, and glory by excellence in battle disappears before his eyes. This failure brings unbearable shame which Tecmessa tries to mitigate but cannot. His feelings overpower his actions

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madness

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what the warriors live for. It is by succeeding in bringing them honor. Odysseus had succeeded in being granted the armor of Achilles

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contest of arms

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what ill I do? this constant questioning of one's own actions portrays human's unknowing of self doubt

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"ti draso"

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this consists of survival, bravery, and the achievement of and maintaining victory as the top priority;kleos=fame, help your friends and hurt your enemies

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Heroic code, shame culture

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Athena invites Odysseus to laugh at Ajax in the condition he's in but he refuses saying, "For I see that we are nothing, nothing more than ghosts--all we that live--or vacuous insubstatntial shadows". Odysseus tells Agamemnon to have pity on Ajax and bury his body. With Tecmessa, she tries to get Ajax to have pity on his family, and to not commit suicide. She almost achieves at convincing Ajax not to

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Odysseus' and Tecmessa's pity

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he packs his sword in the earth and falls on it. The staging of his suicide suggests that Sophocles was staging the death of a world-view, the death of a heroic perspective on the human condition that was rooted in the Homeric past. His suicide reveals part of a larger tragedy which implicates the very heroic code by which he lived: the gory glory of Troy's killing fields makes soldiers, but somehow it doesn't make men

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suicide of Ajax

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Odysseus argues with Agamemnon about the burial of Ajax. By arguiing to bury his enemy's body, Odysseus finally frees Ajax from the shame to which he had been inextricably bound and from which he could never liberate himself

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burial and the body becoming sacred