Clouds, Chaos and Tongue

The trickster themes that are prominent within "Clouds" are fundamental ambiguity and boundary crossing. These themes make themselves known through Strepsiades's denounciation of the gods as well as Socrates who claims that the only gods who exist are the Clouds, the tongue, and Chaos. This claim alone shows that there is a lack of what is seen as traditional order within the play.Chaos shows that the world within the play is distorted. Whereas the mortal tongue is responsible for manipulation of mortals within the play. The Clouds are the polar opposite of Chaos and remain the voice of reason throughout the story.

However, the clouds themselves are acknowledged by Socrates and Strepsiades as ever-changing " So.: Have you ever gazed up there and seen a cloud shaped like a centaur, or a leopard, wolf, or bull? St.: Yes, I have... So.: They become anything they want..." (lines 445-450). Even though the clouds are the stability throughout the play they are also part of that instability.

While Chaos and the Clouds are the only two representatives of immortality the tongue represents a shiftiness among the mortals. At the beginning of the play Strepsiades seeks to be a student of the Thinkery in order to convince his creditors that he does not have to pay them back. While Strepsiades is a student he changes his belief in the gods when Socrates skillfully questions him. Later, Strepsiades changes his view of gendered and non-gendered words (mortar, fowl, etc.). When the Thinkery does not benefit Strepsiades he sends his son instead who masters the art of arguing. However, these are turned against as punishment for him denouncing the gods and not being an honest individual.

The Chorus Leader: the Meta-Trickster

I'm focusing on the speech of the Chorus-Leader where he addresses the spectators of the play directly. In this speech, the leader conflates a series of dichotomies, as tricksters are wont to do, and also creates dichotomies that were not apparent before.

• Firstly, the difference between playwright and play is collapsed. The Chorus Leader talks in the first person about producing the play. Though he does not discuss literally writing the play, his words indicates an awareness of the constructs of the competitions, the staging, etc., and a choice to be apart of the production. Though this reflects some theatrical conventions of the time, I still think it is important to note.
• Within the audience there are those who are worthwhile to produce plays for, supposedly those who supported another play by Aristophanes. Here, the Chorus Leader divides the audience not by class, gender, citizen status or intelligence, but on their appreciation of his plays.
• Then, the Chorus Leader notes the difference between his play and others that make his play stand out. This includes the lack of cheap gags, or false drama. But also, the Chorus Leaders seeks "newness" and originality.
• A final conflation is that between the stage and world and once again with the Chorus Leader and Aristophanes. With references to singular plays and playwrights, the speech moves away from defending what is being performed concurrently with the speech and instead refers to other plays, which expands the reaches of his speech beyond the singular event.

With the switch in subject of the Chorus Leader's speech from the play he is in, to the politics of the age, specifically Cleon's power and the new calendar, he switches positions of authority and knowledge and effectively tricks the audience. With the conflation of the dichotomy between play and real world, the Chorus Leader can transition from condemning the audience within the theater, to condemning plays that were once performed in a theater, to condemning politics that have nothing to do with theater. He has performed an argument from the inferior position and effectively tricked his audience as Strepsiades hopes to do.

The Chorus Leader appears again when the Better Argument and the Worse Argument are arguing. He again suggests that the audience get to here both arguments that these associates represent. This leads to the Better Argument looking out at the audience and realizing that so many of the leading Athenians fall into the pleasure seekers category of the Worse Argument. Here again, the Chorus Leader, though indirectly, indicts the audience, who probably pride themselves on their rationality (The Better Argument).

The Younger surpasses the Elder-ADD

In the story of the clouds there is an incident between Strepsiades and Pheidippides that demonstrates three themes of Trickster literature: 1)confusing polarities, 2)situation inversion, and 3) the confusion of categories. Towards the ending of the play, Pheidippides beats his father Strepsiades and tries to justify it. He argues that if a parent can beat a child to instruct it, than the inverse of that should be allowed as well. This is a confusing and subversive inverse since it really doesn’t make sense for a child ever to discipline in a parent for the means of teaching that parent a lesson. Pheidippides also argues that old men are actually in their second childhoods. While there is some truth in arguing that old people become childlike again, it still does not justify the right to beat your father. Pheidippides seems to have the role of father and some severely mixed up in his mind. Yet he continues with his convoluted argument by declaring that if the old are beaten in front of the younger, then the younger will also learn. In my opinion, this is an absurd conclusion, which still does not justify the beatings/ “discipline” of his father. Pheidippides then makes a reference to the animal kingdom where the son usually avenge themselves against their father. Pheidippides seems to have this gift of gab and argument. I think it’s even hilarious that he’s continuing to justify hitting his father by presenting this reference to animals.

Eventually gullible Strepsiades submits Pheidippides. Pheidippides takes it one step even further by suggesting he should also be able to beat his mother. At this point, I’m not sure whether Pheidippides is still serious. Pheidippides flips the role between child and parent and blurs the lines of who really “wears the pants.” In this scene the younger surpasses the elder, and the elder is tricked in an indirect way by the younger.

Unraveling the 'Cloak'

In my reading of the play I was intrigued by the multiple and transforming roles of the “cloak.” It is used to highlight aspects of people’s character, designate victims and victimizers and underlines the theme of trickery and shape shifting in the play. There are several very interesting uses of the cloak in the play and I want to examine them each with a close reading with a lens of the some the plays major themes previously mentioned.

The cloak is first used to showcase negative aspects of Strepsiades’ wife’s character.

STREPSIADES: As for her,


she smelled of perfume, saffron, long kisses,


greed, extravagance, lots and lots of sex.*


Now, I’m not saying she was a lazy bones.


She used to weave, but used up too much wool.


To make a point I’d show this cloak to her


and say, “Woman, your weaving’s far too thick.”

A wife weaving a cloak for her husband could easily be seen as an a gift but this expectation is refuted by Strepsiades who instead turns this act of gift giving into thievery. Yes, she makes him a cloak but with too much wool! Therefore Strepsiades implies she is not being economical enough and costing him money as suggested by his previous descriptions of her as greedy and extravagant. In this light her gift of a cloak is a way of thieving. What could have been viewed as generous nature instead through Strepsiades eyes is twisted into a greedy one. Thus the two binaries of generosity and greed are left questionable and unstable.

The next usage of the word is a very significant because it addresses gift giving and thievery of a cloak in the small story by the same character.

STREPSIADES: Well, well. What did Socrates come up with,


to get you all some food to eat?

STUDENT: He spread some ashes thinly on the table,


then seized a spit, went to the wrestling school,


picked up a queer, and robbed him of his cloak,


then sold the cloak to purchase dinner.*

Socrates steals a cloak but that that same cloak is turned into a gift to his students when he sells it to provide them with food. The idea of the cloak seems to be a shape shifter in itself being a stolen item and a gift. And likewise Socrates in just a four-line story shifts from being a thief and a generous provider. No wonder he’s such a good debater he can shift words’ meanings and connotations from one thought to the next.

This is a very minor example but I believe it does show support for the cloak as a shape-shifting symbol throughout the play.

STREPSIADES: [lifting his cloak to cover his head]


Not yet, not yet. Not ‘til I wrap this cloak


like this so I don’t get soaked. What bad luck,


to leave my home without a cap on.

In this case the cloak becomes more a physical shape shifter from a cloak to a cap instead of the more metaphorical or symbolic roles in carries throughout the rest of the play.

SOCRATES: All right, take off your cloak.

STREPSIADES: Have I done something wrong?

SOCRATES: No. It’s our custom


to go inside without a cloak.

STREPSIADES: But I don’t want


to search your house for stolen stuff.

SOCRATES: What are you going on about? Take it off.

Strepsiades then removes his cloak and shoes. This was a section where I think it’s very valuable to read the foot note: “Legally an Athenian who believed someone had stolen his property could enter the suspect’s house to search. But he first had to remove any garments in which he might conceal something which he might plant in the house.”

This is a great example of trickery! Strepsiades is prevented from being able to steal from the students of Thinkery, by entering with a garment to conceal, and yet the same students steal this cloak (presumably). The custom is transformed in a tricky ploy and the possible victimizer is transformed into a victim.

But of course binaries are not stable in this play and the flip is again switched when Strepsiades turns his possible victimizers into victims by lighting their school on fire. Overreaction?

STREPSIADES: Yes, it is—


and lots more, too. But everything I learned,


I right away forgot, because I’m old.

PHEIDIPPIDES: That why you lost your cloak?

STREPSIADES: I didn’t lose it—


I gave it to knowledge—a donation.

The cloak (presumably stolen since it is never given it back) is transformed, in Strepsiades’ opinion, from stolen cloak to a donation or gift. But this opposition is not even allowed to be stable. The oppositions collapse as shown in the end of the play.

STUDENT: Help! Who’s setting fire to the house?

STREPSIADES: It’s the man
 whose cloak you stole.

STUDENT: We’ll die. You’ll kill us all!

Strepsiades now decides that he cloak was in fact stolen and not a donation as he stated previously. Even in the same individual’s outlook binaries are not fixed but constantly shifting to whichever side will benefit him most in the moment. Just like Socrates he is learning to shift the meanings of words to better his case, maybe he has hope as an arguer after all.

The cloak becomes a very useful tool in the play to highlight the tricky nature of its characters and undermine the stability of oppositions. The polarities of giving and stealing are not just confused but absolutely destroyed and in a way ridiculed. The cloak is able to shift its way back and forth as a symbol of generosity and greed throughout the play. It breaks down the boundaries between the victims and the victimizers allowing the characters to easily jump from side to side.

I’m on the wife’s side; a cloak this widely used would need to be pretty thick!

Strepsiades AND Pheidippides... Tricksters After all?

One of the most important and over-riding trickster themes of Aristphanes' The Clouds is boundary-crossing and transgression. Strepsiades, and his son Pheidippides are able to cross these boundaries and transgress the norms of society to such a degree that it is easy to see how and why these characters are considered tricksters. Physical and social boundaries are both crossed within the course of the play.

Strepsiades crosses physical boundaries almost constantly throughout The Clouds. Whether it be from his home to the Thinkery or the threshold itself of the Thinkery, Strepsiades emerges from these boundary crossings unscathed, unharmed and unchanged. Pheidippides, on the other hand, does not remain unchanged from crossing the threshold of the Thinkery. He returns to the outside world pale and hunched. The Thinkery has been able to change him into a sophist. The ability to shape-shift is, as we've discussed in class, one of the fundamental attributes of a trickster. But, as Dr. Abbot asks in Georgia's blog post, does it matter that Pheidippides had no real control over this change and what does that mean in the greater understanding of the play? What does it mean that although Strepsiades wishes to shape-shift, or change, into a sophist, he is unable to? I'm not sure of the answer to these questions. Maybe we can discuss it further in class.

Pheidippides also crosses social boundaries. After being fetched from the Thinkery, Pheideippides is able to present a rational argument about why it is correct and moral for sons to beat their fathers. This inversion of the traditional Greek family life crossed many social boundaries, but it is not until Pheidippides uses the same reasoning to argue that it is okay for sons to beat their mothers, that he has crossed an uncrossable boundary. To borrow a popular phrase, that is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Strepsiades curses Pheidippides and asks if it would not be better if Pheidippides threw himself, Socrates and the Worse Argument into the execution pit.

Shapeshifting

Clouds by Aristophanes contains elements of shapeshifting/skin changing that is parallel to the trickster character. We first see this when Strepsiades sees into the Thinkery for the first time and sees the many pale, emaciated students who attend Socrates' teachings. Also, some have their bottoms facing the skies while their heads are closer to the ground.

STREPSIADES: Why are their arse holes gazing up to heaven?

STUDENT: Directed studies in astronomy.

I found this another sign for shapeshifting. Usually, the head is seen as the most intellectual part of the body and is revered in Greek society. However, here they have switched their heads with their bottoms, which is the one of the dirtiest parts of the body. The Student tells Strepsiades that they are studying astronomy through their bottom. How is this possible? How could they be studying astronomy through such a body part? It seems like another brilliant satire Aristophanes created.

The reason these students underwent the changes was because they were convinced the mind was more important than the body. In coming into the Thinkery, Strepsiades gives his cloak and his shoes as "a donation" even though later on in the play, the student acknowledges he stole it. The cloak and the shoes are very important articles of clothing. To abandon it was to knowingly give up all care for his body and focus on his mind only.

Now when Strepsiades undergoes his induction into the Thinkery, he is powdered with flour to gain a pasty complexion. He goes from being a country bumpkin to taking steps to develop his argumentative skills through this physical change that is required of all the students. His son takes on the same physical change.

STREPSIADES: Ah ha, my lad—

what joy. What sheer delight for me to gaze, [1170]

first, upon your colourless complexion,

to see how right away you’re well prepared 1490

to deny and contradict—with that look

which indicates our national character

so clearly planted on your countenance—

the look which says, “What do you mean?”—the look

which makes you seem a victim, even though

you’re the one at fault, the criminal.

I know that Attic stare stamped on your face.

Now you must rescue me—since you’re the one

who’s done me in.

Strepsiades sees now that his son resembles the other students, he is successful in his studies and can relieve him of his debts. When a trickster has this ability, he uses it to his advantage. Although Pheidippides has the ability to argue, he doesn't. It is Strepsiades that has to drive his debtors away, not his son. Instead Pheidippides beats his father and contributes nothing to society. Pheidippides changed, but his morals didn't. Now instead of being an idiot with a gambling problem, he's arrogant and believes himself above the usual social rules.

STREPSIADES: By god, my lad,
I really did have you taught to argue
against what’s just, if you succeed in this—
and make the case it’s fine and justified

for a father to be beaten by his son.

In this way, Pheidippides embodies one of the more prominent features of a trickster beautifully.

Strepsiades: Tricked

To me, the entire play seems to play on the trickster’s quality of constructing and eluding traps. Strepsiades’ whole purpose in the play is to learn how to avoid the “trap” of loans that his son has brought upon him. In order to do this, he wishes to learn how to construct a sort of counter-trap with words from the sophists at the Thinkery. While he is in the Thinkery, he strives to come up with clever ruses but only ends up with buffoonish solutions like burning the court records with a magnifying glass, hanging himself, and getting a witch to bring down the moon.

However, it seems that some of the other characters are better tricksters than Strep in this area. Socrates is introduced with a story about how he caught (trapped?) a queer to steal his cloak and then, later, does the same thing to Strep. Pheidippides is eventually the one to learn the ways of the sophists and uses this knowledge to lure his father into agreeing with his own beating. Furthermore, at the end of the play, the Cloud/Chorus leader tells Strep “You’re the one responsible for this./ you turned yourself toward these felonies.” And “That’s what we do each time we see someone/ who falls in love with evil strategies,/ until we hurl him into misery,/ so he may learn to fear the gods.” These lines lead me to believe that the entire play is a clever trap set for Strep by the Clouds (who are gorgeous women-a stereotype about women’s deceiving nature perhaps?). They didn’t like his avoidance of his debts through dishonesty and therefore taught him a lesson by letting him think his scheme would succeed (for the Clouds seemed to agree with his ideas up until this point) only to have him end up in a worse position, with debts going to court and a son who beats him. This line is also interesting because, here, the Clouds acknowledge the presence of the gods and their superiority when earlier Socrates had touted the Clouds themselves as the only gods.

The play ends with the one trap Strep succeeds in setting. After his plans fall apart and he his left with nothing, Hermes, the ultimate trickster and trap artist “tells” Strep to burn down the Thinkery with Socrates, all his students, and perhaps even his son inside. Strep does this to punish them for their impiety, which makes me think that the trap set by the gods was for the sophists as well. This would make sense considering that Socrates and his students not only deny the existence of the gods (a big no-no) but Socrates even commits an act of hubris when he makes his entrance in a way reminiscent of the divine (an even bigger no-no).

Neologism

A neologism is a new word or phrase that has not yet gained full acceptance as standard vocabulary. At one time, "blog" was such a word. More recently, we got "blogosphere," which may still belong to the category of neologism.

We need a neologism!

In class on Wednesday, I suggested that we need a word to describe that quality of being able to maneuver in such a way as to pass by degrees from outside to inside or from the periphery to the center.

Hermes does this in the Hymn to Hermes. He divides the sacrificial portions of the cow into twelve, not eleven, portions. He argues with Apollo in such a way that they end up taking their dispute to Zeus on Olympus -- exactly where Hermes wants to be. He uses his lyre to ingratiate himself with his half-brother. Finally he joins the pantheon.

The character Paul (played by Will Smith) in the film Six Degrees of Separation attempts something similar. Pretending to have suffered an attack in Central Park, Paul arrives in false distress at the apartment of the wealthy couple Ouisa and Flan Kittredge. In a buttoned-down shirt and blue blazer, he looks as though he could in fact know the couple's children from boarding school. In fact, he's a trickster, a flimflam artist, a con man. But through ingenuity and charm -- including a spellbinding monologue on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye -- he almost succeeds in joining the pantheon, which for him is the elite social class that the Kittredges represent.

So we need a new word. What is the combination of chutzpah or audacity and finesse or subtlety? 

Maybe "tricksterism"? 

Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice...

Bright-eyed Athena smiled and stroked him with her hand . . .
"You're bold, with subtle plans, and love deceit." 

Zeus laughed aloud at the sight of his scheming child
so smoothly denying his guilt about the cattle. 

My wife's early childhood was spent amid her father's Italian-American family in western Pennsylvania. Her uncles, aunts, and mostly older cousins were always around. Her grandmother even lived in their house for a time.

She tells a story about what it was like to grow up in such a household. Again and again, one of her uncles would say to her, when she entered the room where the adults had gathered, "Hey, I brought a present for you today! I left it in the kitchen. Why don't you go in there and get it!"

On the first and maybe the second of these occasions, she ran into the kitchen to discover . . . pots and pans. No present. And when she walked out of the kitchen, she was met with boisterous laughter.

From a tearful child's perspective, however, not quite so humorous. What in the world were those men thinking?

Anthropologists have made a close study of lying and trickery among modern-day Greeks. Juliet du Boulay, in Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village, John Kennedy Campbell, in Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community, and Ernestine Friedl, in Vasilika: A Village in Modern Greece, all remark on the early training of children in the arts of secrecy and lying. Du Boulay describes lying as “a practice so prevalent in this society as to be an institution” and as a talent “almost universally possessed,” while the villagers are said to possess “an extreme ingenuity in deceit” (172-73). Campbell remarks that among Sarakatsani men lying is a matter of both habit and principle (283), and Friedl makes the observation that “[o]lder children who have learned to turn the tables on their parents and try to deceive them are admired even as they are scolded” (80).

Here, I think, we have an opportunity to delve a little deeper into the trickster phenomenon.

In class, we pondered the fact that Athena and Zeus take such delight in the trickery of Odysseus and Hermes, respectively, even though the goddess and god are the intended victims of the deceit. Why aren't they more indignant?

Imagine that you live on a remote island. There are two clans living on the island: the shore clan and the mountain clan. You are a member of the shore group. A cousin of yours, a fellow clansman, tricks you into buying a sick horse. The horse dies shortly after the sale.

Now imagine the same scenario, except that you buy the horse from a member of the mountain clan.

Clearly, being duped by an insider is not the same as being deceived by an outsider. In the first scenario, you will probably have a chance at some point to turn the tables on your roguish cousin. Not only that: you can also feel some grudging respect for your cousin's wiliness. The important thing, the factor that trumps everything else, is that he's your cousin, he's "one of us." Next time, maybe, it'll be one of those mountain people he'll trick, and then you and the rest of your clan will have a good, long laugh. Together.

In the second scenario, though, where the deceiver is an outsider, you can see yourself only as a victim, unfairly treated. Your deep resentment is not mitigated by any other considerations. You cannot shift perspective, even a little bit, to see the incident through the eyes of the deceiver.

So much depends on perspective, doesn't it? When my wife's uncles played their trick on her -- we might call it a heartless trick -- they were thinking like those Greek villagers that anthropologists have studied. By tricking her, they did not seek to exclude her from their group. They did not imagine that they were preying on a gullible and naive child. Their laughter was not meant to be cruel.

Instead, they were saying, "This is what we do. This is who we are. To defend the boundaries that define us and exclude them, we do this." And, as with Athena, Zeus, and the people of Vasilika, those uncles would have been thrilled if one day in the future, my wife had convinced one of them that there was a present in the kitchen, just for him.

 

My Dearest Husband

 

From Calypso's Cave on Ogygia 

Dearest Odysseus,

Calypso insists that I write you. I am entrusting this letter to a Phoenician vessel that put in here yesterday to water. They say that they will deliver it or give it to someone who can.

I arrived here two months ago, after an arduous journey. No one I consulted had ever heard of this place. In the end, I had to go to Aeaea and get advice from Circe. That took some time. For one thing, she seldom has visitors and kept begging me to stay a bit longer. Also, there was an accident with a potion . . . Well, it's a long story, but I actually like the way my nose looks now, much better than before. A snout can be very useful, you know.

Then, after setting out from Aeaea for Ogygia, someone on my ferry recommended this wonderfully palatial hotel in Scheria. She said that the mother-daughter proprietors -- yes, your very own Arete and Nausicaa! -- had only been in business for a year, but that she'd heard wonderful things. So, another detour. They send their love, by the way. I did get a glimpse or two of Alcinous as well. He's doing about as well as can be expected, after the divorce.

I hope you found my note, pinned to the olive-tree post of our bed.

I wish I had never come across that book about heroes! The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I thought it was your own memoir!

I did read it, as you know. I read all about the hero's journey, how you're supposed to have gained wisdom on your journey. And then I thought to myself, "But he's not changed at all!"

I even memorized this part of the book: "The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment."

Oh, that sounded so . . . wonderful. (I think: I'm not sure about that "at-one-ment" part.) Yes, let him leave home a man too pleased with himself by far, a braggart at times, a glory hound, prone to outbursts, a husband who rarely speaks his true mind even to his dutiful wife. Then let him come home changed, chastened and enlightened, far wiser. More like . . . well, more like me, if I may say so myself.

But did you? Did you come back a new man? In a word, no.

The same old Odysseus. I've talked this over ad nauseum with Circe, Arete, Nausicaa, and Calypso. They all agree that you are, by your very nature, incorrigible. That the very quality that enabled you to survive all your adventures means that you will never change. Only Athena disagrees. (Naturally. She always takes your side . . .)

I don't know whether I'll ever come home. Remember: Telemachus likes light starch in his chiton, and Eurycleia has to be reminded to dust the men's quarters.

Love,
Penelope

P.S. Calypso says you left your toothbrush here. I'm enclosing it in this package.