Brett McCluskey 5/21/03
The board’s proposal is preposterous! Banning Oedipus from the reading list(s) of our high schools (for any reason) is not only unconstitutional, but it would end up doing more harm to our youth, than good. It is erroneous to think that the ancient Greeks are irrelevant to contemporary American society. Let me remind the board of some of the important contributions given to the human race by the Greeks. Epic poetry, history and drama; philosophy in all its branches, from metaphysics to economics; mathematics and many of the natural sciences – all these begin with the Greeks. Such a decision to exclude Oedipus from required high school reading will have far reaching and dire consequences. Just imagine the catastrophic effects of excluding the like of the great men of ancient Greece. Without Archimedes and his ideas on fluid statics where would we be? Without Zeno and his paradoxes where would we be? Playwrights Euripides, Aeschylus, also wrote song. Music, also owes a great deal to theses two men. It was Boethius’s writings that Pope Gregory, Guido D’arezzo, Hucbald amongst many others who read their accounts of music thus transferring them to us.
If the board is considering banning Oedipus Rex from our schools, then we ought to consider banning the show “Cops”, from appearing on our TV’s. While we are at it, we might as well get rid of the Old and New Testament too. Finally, if the Greeks have nothing to do with modern day society then neither does the Jews. The board cannot possibly think that since the Oedipus plays deals with subjects such as incest, and self-mutilation, that it does not reflect the values of San Bernardino. I feel as if Socrates is on trial again. It would be better to propose the removal of the Maccabbees from the Catholic Liturgy.
How could the ideas of the Greeks be detrimental to our youths or to us in any way? Besides, I was under the impression and have taken for truth that we, civil America, lived in a land where all of its inhabitants presumably had the freedom of religion. I had also assumed that the aforementioned human race had freedom of the press. The ideas and philosophies of Greece have become our own. They have become one with the thoughts of modern day man. So much has the influences of ancient Greece been felt and have been integrated into modern day civil society that we take their omnipresent contributions for granted are so plays by Sophocles as well as other Greek writers, and philosophers show us catharsis, and filial piety.
Oedipus wants to know just one thing; he wants to know who he is. If you are banning the Oedipus plays because they contain too many references to the consultations with the oracles, then I still cannot see the point of banning it from the reading lists because it ‘may contain material unsuitable for children’. Consulting the oracles at Delphi is similar to consulting Madame Cleo and all of our friends at the ‘psychic friend’s network’.
The Oedipus plays do not undermine family values, instead attempts to portray them. Take for example Oedipus’s shows compassion for the fate of his own children. His sincere desire for his children to be looked after and cared for, once he became exiled, shows how much love a father in any situation can have for his children. Oedipus examines many of life’s common dilemmas. In wanting to know whom he was. Are not compassion and the seeking of the truth concepts that contemporary American society deem valuable?
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