There is a common interview technique that asks the hopeful candidate to describe themselves in terms of an animal - 'if you were an animal, what would you be and why?' - which elicits a varied response depending on the candidate and the position for which they are applying:
- I am like an eagle as I aspire to reach new heights and soar over my competition;
- I am a swan, calm and graceful on the outside but with feet frantically kicking as I take on a multitude of tasks;
- a piranha, ruthless and always on the look-out for new opportunities;
- a labrador, loyal to my employer....
The answers are intended to sum up and convey some essential aspect of the candidate, the key characteristic that they consider the most important. The interviewer uses these questions to try to get some sense of who the candidate is, what their strengths (and possibly weaknesses) are and what they value.
So what would our heroes of Greek tragedy have answered to an interview question like this and what can we learn from them? Obviously we don't have a transcript of any such fictional interviews...but we do have their words from their plays...
In Euripides' Medea, when faced with Medea's hostile accusations, Jason states:
'I shall have to show myself a clever speaker. This hurricane of recrimination and abuse calls for good seamanship: I'll furl but an inch of sail and ride it out.'
Jason's point of reference is the sea and man's domination over the waves. He calls Medea's verbal abuse a 'hurricane' and determines to respond to it by stowing the sail and thus leaving less sail to be meet the force of Medea's storm. It makes sense that Jason would use shipping imagery to refer to himself. His fame comes from his conquest of the oceans, his journey in his ship, the Argo, to Iolcus, to retrieve the Golden Fleece. This was what brought him his heroic status, this is where he was a true hero, and it is this comfortable ground to which he harks back when faced with Medea's fury. He seems out of his depth in a verbal battle of wits with Medea, and so he determines to face up to her using the thing that he is best at. (How ironic it is, therefore, that he will be killed by his own ship later in life!). Presumably then, if faced with the above question in interview, Jason would answer, 'I am the captain of a ship, weathering fearsome storms with courage and skill'; what a pity his sea-faring experience benefitted him not at all when he met Medea's storm.
In the Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Clytemnestra (albeit somewhat duplicitously) refers to Agamemnon as:
'the watchdog of the fold, the main royal, saving stay of the vessel, rooted oak that thrusts the roof sky-high...Land at dawn to the shipwrecked past all hope, light of the morning burning off the night of storm, the cold clear spring to the parched horseman'.
We must remember that these are Clytemnestra's words, not Agamemnon's, and that she is most likely exaggerating Agamemnon's importance in order to draw down the anger of the jealous gods on him. However, Agamemnon does not seem to correct her or to object; he does later object (somewhat weakly) to her insistence that he step on the red tapestry and take the 'tributes of the gods' but he does not repudiate Clytemnestra's descriptions of him as the watchdog, mast, and so on. Perhaps he agrees with her assessment of him as the thing that offers support and comfort. All the images that Clytemnestra uses are of strength and support - a dog that protects the flocks, the mast that supports the sail, the column that holds the roof of a house, the sight of land for the shipwrecked sailor, the dawn after a night of storm, water in a time of thirst. Clytemnestra (and indirectly through his failure to object to these terms, Agamemnon) describes him as supportive and life-giving, a rescue to others in times of danger. Perhaps this is how Agamemnon, as leader of the Greeks in the mission to Troy, would see himself - he brought honour back to the Greeks, as well as plunder and the growth of the nation. (Of course, Iphigenia, the daughter he sacrificed in order to achieve this, would be unlikely to share this image of Agamemnon!) One wonders what Agamemnon would answer in an interview - which of these many attributes would he choose to be his own key characteristic?
Finally, I turn to Sophocles' Ajax, the tragic hero who, faced with humiliation, chooses to kill himself instead of living with the public obliteration of his honour. In a society with shame-culture values, the loss of honour is unbearable and Ajax's solitary suicide is a clear manifestation of this. After his wife, Tecmessa, begs Ajax not to kill himself, in his famous deception speech, Ajax describes his apparent change of heart - although the speech is much-disputed, Ajax seems to suggest that he has changed his mind and now will not kill himself after all. The words that he uses are revealing:
'A will of iron may bend. A little while ago, I was tough-tempered as the hardest iron; but now my edge is blunted by a woman's soft persuasion.'
Ajax, the greatest Greek warrior, second only to Achilles, describes himself as a weapon. His will is 'iron', a common material for weapons, he was 'tough-tempered', a reference to the process used to harden weapons, but now, his 'edge' is 'softened'. It is interesting that when he is thinking about not killing himself for the sake of his honour, when he is thinking of putting his honour second to his loved ones, he refers to himself as a blunted weapon. When he is a ferocious warrior, he is 'tough-tempered as the hardest iron' but when he decides not to kill himself for the sake of his honour, he is 'blunted' or weak and useless as a weapon. Ajax sees himself as the embodiment of all that is valuable to him - he is famous for one thing only, being a supreme force on the battlefield, and so he is the weapon.
Three heroes, three types of men, and each refers to himself (or allows a reference to him) in a different way. Ajax is a warrior known only for his fighting prowess - his point of reference is a weapon. Agamemnon is a leader of men - his comparisons are those that offer support and shelter. Jason is a hero who ventured over the ocean beyond the known boundaries of the world - he refers to himself as a sailor facing a storm. Perhaps this gives us some idea of how they would answer in an interview situation. But what would be the job for which each would apply.....?
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