Throughout Pericles,
I couldn’t help but think of Oedipus Rex.
There are quite a few similarities, so it’s a slightly obvious connection, perhaps,
but a fascinating one to me for one particular reason.
In Pericles, we
see bad things happen to good people and bad people. But in the end, everything
works out quite conveniently for the good people—rather miraculously so, in
fact. I was going to write that it’s reminiscent of the famous Greek tradition
of deus ex machina, and when I went
to the Wikipedia page
for the term, I saw that, lo and behold, Pericles is listed as an example of the device. I was quite pleased
with myself, I’ll admit. But moving on. The morality of Pericles is simple: when we do good, we receive good—if not
immediately, then eventually, but still with certainty—and when we do evil, we
receive evil. There’s no need for complexity within the framework of this play.
These ideas are states quite explicitly in the closing lines of Pericles, spoken by a narrator called
Gower.
In Oedipus Rex, we
see bad things happen all over the place, but first of all, good and bad are
not so easily separated. And second, these events may be due to character
flaws, but they’re not a direct punishment for immoral actions in the way they
are in Pericles. Not only that, but
there is no coming back from the events like there is in Pericles. There is no deus ex
machina in Oedipus. There’s no
recovery. Oedipus gauges his eyes out and Jocasta kills herself. Those
consequences are final and irrevocable. The morality of this play is not as
simple. Oedipus does good throughout the play; he seems to receive no reward
for this, yet is punished severely for his fault of pride.
There are many ways to think about these concepts, but the
one that kept coming to my mind again and again is the classic question: why do
bad things happen to good people?
When that becomes the question, a lot changes. In Pericles, the answer is “bad things
happen to good people most often because of the bad things that bad people do,
but good will always come in the end.” In Oedipus,
the answer is “bad things happen to good people because bad things happen.”
To be honest, I’m not really sure which answer is more
comforting…or if either of them are.
There are many ways you can read Pericles, but I think I’ll always read it through this lens, and associate
it with these questions. And somehow, I don’t think the Bard would be
surprised.
