Summary:
Reviews an adaptation of the legend of Theseus, The King Must Die by Mary Renault. Discusses Theseus's cultural clashes encountered along his journey. Reveals what happens when he endeavors to change the customs and break with tradition.
In the King Must Die, Theseus was portrayed as a hero. He traveled though different places and along his journey, he encountered with some cultural clash with the local customs.
At the harbor in Troizen, Theseus was irritated by the Cretans who insulted his people. They were harassing the oilman's wife. Certainly Theseus could not just observe what happened, he came and told the Cretan man not to annoy the woman. Because of this, he did not take a Cretan ship. In Theseus's culture, women were respected and he felt insulted when strangers from Crete behaved disrespectfully. Moreover, it was his homeland so it was reasonable that the aliens from another land respected the local culture.
In Eleusis, Theseus had to face with the fact that he would have to wrestle with the King and then become the King. He found that tradition strange and disgusting but he had no choice but do it. However, in the first night with the queen, he learned much more than from the three whole years with Troizen girls. Beside this sexual difference, Theseus had to encounter with more clash between his own culture and the local custom. In Eleusis, women possessed the power. Women were heads of families and men were nobody and could not choose wives for their sons, or leave them a name, let alone property. Even the former King did not have his own name. Theseus now was Kerkyon. But Theseus did not have the same background as the other people from Eleusis. He acted differently from other Kerkyons before him. He trained his personal guard, the Companions, and made them warriors. He showed the queen that he was in charge. So the viewpoint about gender positions of Theseus and people from Eleusis was opposite. Women were of control over everything but apparently, Theseus thought another way. He knew that women could not manage without men and he changed the customs in Eleusis. At the feast after Theseus took the kingdom, men drank stupid, and threw bones about as they would never dared of the women had been there to laugh at them. The men in Eleusis from having no power at all became in charge. The cultural clash that Theseus encountered at the beginning led to a shift of power from women's hands to men's in Eleusis.
When the Cranes got together, the girls did not really want to dance all together because to them, it was really unusual to interact with men in that way. They would kill their parents dead with shame but Theseus encouraged them and said men and girls were all the same and cooperation was needed for them to survive. So even though Theseus wanted to get control in Eleusis, in this case, with the other bull dancers, he did not care about the gender differences.
In Crete, he also offended the people there by the conflict with Asterion. He dived to find the ring and and threw it back into the ocean. According to tradition, this was the metaphor of the king so everybody was really amazed.
In Naxos, because of Ariadne was involved in the ceremony so enthusiastically that Theseus was disgusted and then left her there. This is a cultural clash because while that was a tradition for the local citizens, to Theseus it was just horrible. He could not believe that his wife would take part in the ceremony in which the king must die. Moreover, there had been some cultural difference between him and Ariadne even before, she might have seen him still as a bullboy even when he was a king.
Cultural clash is an important part of the novel. It might be about sexuality, gender, respect, and power. Theseus, with his enthusiasms, his power, his intelligence and his youth, endeavored to change the customs, break the tradition in different places. Theseus was the hero created from an ordinary human being. This pondered me with the question how we deal with cultural difference? What is the respect for it? If we have to encounter with a cultural custom from another background that was disgusting to us, what can we do in order to respect it? Can we just follow the custom there? Most likely, but this is not easy when the culture and our personal philosophy are so much in contrast
This is the complete article, containing 719 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
