Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s departure from Congress brings to mind ambition and the other side of ambition’s coin, humiliation – the thirst for fame and power on one side, ignominious failure on the other.
Classical literature abounds with ambitious characters; heroes are by definition ambitious.
McCarthy says he will “serve America in new ways.” When heroes are defeated, they don’t usually retire into private life, claiming that a new chapter lies before them.
Rather, classical heroes admit and enact drastic reversals: Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone withdraws from the scene, admitting to his disastrous errors of judgment, which led to the suicides of his son and his wife. Oedipus himself, at the close of his eponymous tragedy, blinds and exiles himself.
More often, heroes die. But McCarthy wasn’t a hero.
To fall, you need height
In Sophocles’ Ajax, the hero is so enraged and shamed by the fact that the dead Achilles’ armor has gone to Odysseus rather than to him, that he butchers innocent livestock, deluded in his madness that he is killing his fellow Greeks. His madness, sent by the gods, ebbs, and Ajax falls on his sword rather than live with the guilt and disgrace of his actions. But although he accurately attributes his spell of madness to the gods, Ajax also takes responsibility for what he has done.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s departure from Congress brings to mind ambition and the other side of ambition’s coin, humiliation – the thirst for fame and power on one side, ignominious failure on the other.
Classical literature abounds with ambitious characters; heroes are by definition ambitious.
McCarthy says he will “serve America in new ways.” When heroes are defeated, they don’t usually retire into private life, claiming that a new chapter lies before them.
Rather, classical heroes admit and enact drastic reversals: Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone withdraws from the scene, admitting to his disastrous errors of judgment, which led to the suicides of his son and his wife. Oedipus himself, at the close of his eponymous tragedy, blinds and exiles himself.