Iocastê (OR Why I Hate Drama Critics)

Iocastê from the Greek play “Oedipus the King” is often viewed by critics to be a very flat, one dimensional character. She is viewed as such because she seems to only ever be reacting to those around her and she has no real emotions and she would not hold up as an actual person if removed from the play and placed in the real world. However all of Iocastê’s actions speak to just how badly she wishes to remain in power and the lengths she is willing to go to keep her place as queen of Thebes. Hunger for power is motivation enough to cause actual people to kill one another, it is also enough motivation to give Iocastê the depth and dimensions that most critics seem to miss.

The first sign of Iocastê’s hunger for power occurs before the play even begins. She allows her husband to take their newborn son, pierce his ankles and send him away to die in the wild. No woman in her right mind would allow that to happen to her newborn child, no matter how controlling her husband is. Iocastê is aware of what the prophecy says and knows that if the child was allowed to live the stress of worrying about the eventual fulfillment of the prophecy would likely drive her husband to an early grave resulting in the loss of her throne. In order to remain in that seat of power Iocastê does the unthinkable and supports her husband in sending away their only child. The only other course of action that Iocastê could have taken at this point would have been to kill the child herself, and though she is selfish and power hungry even she cannot take that action for fear that Laϊos will banish her in disgust.

Again before we even are allowed to view the action Iocastê acts upon her hunger and follows through with a plan that will ensure that she remains in her station. She has received news that Laϊos had been killed and her city has been set upon by a Sphinx. Thebes is not doing so well and Iocastê must be frantic with worry, the people won’t remove her from her throne during a time of trouble but having a Sphinx terrorizing your city isn’t good. Oedipus seems to be the solution to all of her problems. He solves the riddle of the Sphinx, the people of Thebes reward him by asking him to become their king, and he just happens to be unmarried. Iocastê does the only thing that will keep her in power, she marries Oedipus. A man she knows almost nothing about, a man she has only just met, a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to her late husband. It is safe to assume that by this point Iocastê has some suspicions about who Oedipus really is, suspicions that are only made stronger when the only surviving member of Laϊos’ party requests to be stationed far, far away from Oedipus.

In Scene Two Iocastê enters in the middle of Creon and Oedipus’ fight and straightway attempts to get Oedipus away from Creon. She doesn’t ask what they are fighting about she just tries to get them separated. Iocastê knows that if things between the two men become too hostile it will probably come to blows which, in that time, involved swords and death. There is a good chance that if swords are drawn that Oedipus would end up slain or very gravely injured, both of which would result in less power and status for Iocastê. Getting the men to cease fighting holds another less obvious benefit; the citizens of the Thebes would no longer be able to hear them. By this point in time it is likely that the news of the oracles declaration concerning the sickness would have spread to the general public of Thebes and this argument comes too close to revealing the truth about Oedipus.

Later in Scene Two, at line 182 Iocastê attempts to get Oedipus to forget all that the oracle had to say about the sickness plaguing Thebes. She does this by telling the prophecy that led to what she assumed was the death of her child. It is only when Oedipus beings to ask questions that she realizes something in her plan has gone awry. What Iocastê is unaware of is the prophecy that Oedipus received that was strikingly similar to the one she and Laϊos got about their son. When Oedipus asks about what Laϊos looked like and how many were with him she responds in the only way she can, with the truth. She cannot lie because she is not the only person that has seen Laϊos and she is not the only person who saw his party leave. If she lied to him all it would take for her lies to unravel is Oedipus asking one other person about Laϊos and then he would know that she had lied to him. Oedipus as the king and her husband could expel her from the city for something like that, which Iocastê would not be able to handle because her power is all important to her.

After hearing Oedipus’ account of his life before Thebes Iocastê again tries to get Oedipus to drop this line of inquiry.  Oedipus states that the shepherd is vital to figuring out if he killed Laϊos or not and Iocastê responds with:

You may be sure that he said there were several;

And can he call back that story now? He can not.

The whole city heard it as plainly as I.

But suppose he alters some detail of it:

He can not ever show that Laϊos’ death

Fulfilled the oracle: for Apollo said

My child was doomed to kill him; and my child-

Poor baby!- it was my child that died first.

(Sophocles lines 320-27)

Even as Oedipus is almost certain that he has killed Laϊos, Iocastê makes an effort to place doubts in his mind. An effort that seems to have worked as Oedipus seems to be less concerned about what the shepherd has to say and only wants to hear from him in order to settle the matter.

            The last time that we see Iocastê is in Scene Three when a messenger arrives from Corinth to alert Oedipus about the death of his father. Iocastê, thinking that this is great blessing that will convince Oedipus for once and for all that oracles are not to be trusted, calls for Oedipus to come here the news in person. This is where Iocastê makes the biggest mistake of her life; she does not send the messenger away before trying to convince Oedipus. Even with all her planning she could not prevent one simple messenger from destroying all of her hard work. Once she realizes her folly, Iocastê goes from being a calm and collected woman to a mastermind in total panic. Iocastê begs and pleads that Oedipus leave the story alone and doesn’t search further for his true parentage. When it becomes clear that she has failed she leaves with these rather ominous parting words, “Ah, miserable! / That is the only word I have for you now. / That is the only word I can ever have,” (Sophocles lines 151-52).

            It isn’t until the Éxodos that we learn that Iocastê has killed herself. The thought of losing her station in life and her power is too much for her to deal with and she takes her own life before the things that matter the most to her in life can be taken from her. Her last line “That is the only word I can ever have,” (Sophocles p. 974 l.152) shows her true feelings about not being in power and not being of high status. She would be miserable and that is all that she would have been, in order to save herself from that misery she concocts a plan and follows through.

From birth to death Iocastê did everything she could to be in a position of power over those around her. It pushed her and motivated her to do things that others would see as illogical and wrong. It caused her to have no love for any person but herself. Iocastê’s insatiable hunger for power placed her in a position where death was the only option to her and she did not hesitate to take it. Apologies to the critics, but Iocastê is anything but a flat, one dimensional character.

Barbie Syndrome

We live in a social world, a world that is growing to be more and more dependent upon technology to keep us connected and to keep us informed. Growing hand in hand with our dependence on technology is the amount of time we spend viewing advertisements. Whether it is an ad for clothes or one for your local supermarket all ads are attempting to sell the same thing, the perfect life. They do this by showing what the media has decided is the perfect person using their product. “From childhood to adulthood, television, billboards, movies, music videos, video games, computer games, toys, the internet, and magazines convey images of ideal attractiveness, beauty, shape, size, strength, and weight” (Croll, 537). Without being aware of it we are being told hundreds of times a day that we are not good enough, that we need to be something different in order to be liked, loved and successful. From our height to our weight to our facial features we are being told on a daily basis that we are wrong and that we are worthless.

                “At 8 years old, girls believe that weight control is strongly associated with self-worth and view dieting as a means of improving self-worth” (Croll, 540), in the second grade our children are worried about how they look and how much they weigh. How do we expect these children to survive through puberty, the time when everything grows, without lasting negative effects? The cruel truth is that we can’t.  “58% of girls want to lose weight” (Croll, 563) while “over one-third of boys think their current size is too small” (Croll, 537). The worries may be on the opposite sides of the spectrum, but the results are often the same. “Approximately 30% of boys and over 55% of girls report using unhealthy weight control methods” (Croll, 540). The goal for the boys is to drop fat and put on muscle while all the girls want is a slimmer waist and a bigger chest, both will do anything to get it. “Vomiting, laxatives, diet pills, cigarette smoking, and diuretics” (Croll, 540) are all used and abused in an effort to be counted as a member of the “Cult of Slimness” (Fiedler, 564).

                But where did this all start? Where did our society’s obsession with slimming down or bulking up begin? Horrifyingly the answer is children’s toys. “Over 800 million Barbie dolls have been sold and annual sales amount to more than 1 billion dollars” (Croll, 538), that’s more than 1 billion dollars spent every year to show our children something they should never aspire to be. “If Barbie were real, her neck would be too long and thin to support the weight of her head, and her upper body proportions would make it difficult for her to walk upright. If Ken were real, his huge barrel chest and enormously thick neck would nearly preclude him from wearing a shirt” (Croll, 538). This is what we give our children to play with; this is what our children want to be when they grow up. A woman whose chest is so large that she cannot remain upright for long periods of time and a man who is unable to wear shirts, both unable to hold jobs or support a family. The only silver lining that I can find is that Barbie’s hips are likely too narrow for her to give birth so they would have no children to starve to death. This obsession with looking perfect and therefore being happy, what I call the ‘Barbie Syndrome’ , begins early in life and remains with us for a long time to come.

                Models, women well past the childhood age of playing with dolls, are striving every day to live up to the ideas about a beautiful body given to them in their youth. Already the average model is “at least 30 pound lighter and 6 inches taller than the average female” (Croll, 538), but as of late pressures within the modeling industry are pushing these women to be thinner and look taller. At the 2006 New York fashion week models “appeared so gaunt and thin that their knees and elbows were larger than their concave thighs and pipe cleaner arms, and their bobbling heads looked as if a light breeze could detach them from their frail bodies” (Wilson, 542).  This description paints a humorous picture of a very dangerous reality, that those who achieved everything that ‘Barbie Syndrome’ promised may now be expected to continue to push this ideal even further. Models are not alone in this; beauty queens have been swept up in the mad dash to make beauty an extreme instead of every day. This new found application for “less is more” can be seen in one of the most famous beauty pageants, Miss America.  “Since 1970, nearly all of the winners have had BMIs below the healthy range, with some as low as 16.9, a BMI that would meet part of the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa” (Croll, 539). With women so frail and thin that you can count their ribs as they walk by being placed on pedestals and worshiped by men and women everywhere, how can we expect society as a whole to keep health first when beauty is so widely revered?

                 It is no longer enough to reduce the size of the bad; we now must increase the size of the good. For women this generally means a reshaping of the nose and an enhancement of the breasts, two fairly simple and, now, common procedures. For men the goal is something that in the past was impossible, is now painful but possible. This painful goal is height, a whole three inches. To gain these much sought after inches these men pay to have both legs broken in two spots and then having “eleven arrow-sharp carbide pins [pushed in] until they bottom out against bone” (Kita, 548). For the next six months these pins are rotated to force the bone farther and farther apart, “work is out of the question. This is true not only during the distraction phase but also for three months or more after the frames come off and the new bone is hardening”  (Kita, 548).  Nine or more months out of work for three inches more of height and these men pay money for it. Why? Simply because we, as a society, have told them that they are too short to matter. The men who willingly take part in this painful and expensive process will cite a whole list of reasons why being three inches taller will make their lives better, but the short of it is that they are tired of being over looked and turned down for things they are qualified and prepared to do because they are not the right size.

                There are those who would say that the focus on thinner men and women is a way of pushing youth to living healthier lifestyles. What these people seem to be missing is that the youth is never told how they got so thin or even what type of thin is healthy. All they are told is that thin will get you jobs, thin will make you happy, thin will fix your life. We never advise these impressionable young people on the difference between just being thin and being healthy. So the only goal they have is to be thin and being the head strong youth that we all once were they rush off with reckless abandon to find the thing that will make them thin and keep them that way.

Our society focus is on thin and not healthy. Until this has been changed so that healthy is the new focus, ‘Barbie Syndrome’ will continue to spread across the country and across generations like a twenty-first century plague. There is hope for the future, in 2006 “the organizers of Madrid fashion week...said they were banning models with a height-to-weight ratio below what the World Health Organization considered normal” (Wilson, 543). However a problem that began in the home must surely be fixed in the home. The greatest sign that we have not doomed our nation will be when Barbie and Ken could, if they were real, remain upright and wear a shirt.

Standardized Testing

When the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into law nobody anticipated the results that would come in the following years. With increased pressure for students to score high on standardized tests, virtually all curriculums nationwide have been cut back and trimmed down in order to focus on the “skills” needed to score high on the test. The trimming and cutting away of the curriculum have resulted in “standardized students” (Williams, 603); students who can guess and “game” their way through a test, but are unable to actually use the knowledge their test results say they have.  This focus on high test scores has resulted in a generation of students that cannot write, read or comprehend information beyond a superficial timed test atmosphere.

                With these tests being the standard by which virtually all our children are being evaluated it brings to mind the question, are these tests fair? When one looks closer into the background and origin of the tests one thing becomes horribly clear, the tests themselves are biased.  Many teachers and researchers have spent a goodly amount of time documenting and arguing this point. A few more noteworthy members of this group argue that “standardized testing works not from a set of objective standards somehow as constant as the North Star but from a set of cultural conceptions about literacy that are neither objective nor static” (Williams, 605). Simplified, they argue that these tests do not evaluate the skills of the student, but how close that student falls to a predetermined cultural norm. Sadly for most inner-city and minority rich schools, their students do not fall into this norm. The “skills” required to score high on these tests are rarely ones that are gained in today’s classroom environment and generally come from out of school experiences; experiences that come to virtually only those students who are well off with highly paid parents. This cultural bias results in students who may excel outside of the test environment being told that they are “below average” or less than they really are. The system of labeling “below average” students has resulted in waves of high school and even junior high drop-outs who believed they could not pass the exam to graduate.

                Standardized test results have become the guidelines for a harsh and unforgiving reward and punishment system for the administration, teachers, and students. Schools as a whole are rewarded or punished on the “quality” of their teaching and learning, as documented by these tests.  Each year, after the results of the tests are returned, schools review, revise and trim the curriculum once again. What most people don’t know is that the “test were never intended to measure the quality of learning or teaching” (Kohn, 599). The tests were created to rank students, to rate them. The creators of the tests openly admit that their tests “are designed so that only about half the test takers will respond correctly” (Kohn, 599). With the test designed so that only 50% can pass, why are they being used to judge the “quality” of the school? When test scores are considered too low schools are punished for not reaching the bench mark. When test scores are considered high enough schools are rewarded for going “above and beyond” to “bridge the gap”. While the students may never see the results of this reward and punishment system the teachers and administration have it hanging over their heads every minute of every day. The high amounts of stress this causes in not conductive to a good learning environment. When the teacher is stressed the children can sense this and it stresses them out as well. Stressed out children cannot learn, they don’t fully understand what stress is all they know is that they are anxious about everything. It is not healthy, high amounts of stress in young children lead to other issues that can have a lifelong effect.

                It must be addressed that standardized testing does have its merits. It is a quick and easy way to make an evaluation about what a child currently knows. Standardized testing is faster than any other form of testing because it if corrected by a computer, no human has to be paid and take the time to hand correct these tests. It is true that when used correctly test scores can be used in a way that changes the teaching approach for the better.  The Cheltenham School District of Pennsylvania is a good example of the correct way to use the information provided by the test scores. The results are organized in a way that is easy to understand and given to the teachers in July, a month before the students arrive. With this information “teachers can account for the effectiveness of their strategies and, if they are not working for some students, adapt to alternatives” (Paige, 614). Sadly this is not a common thread across the nation, in most areas schools and teachers are left on their own to interpret the data and make changes in their approach to teaching.

                This heavy focus on testing has made teachers across the nation worried about what it is doing to the quality of the education that their students are getting.  The “skills” required to pass these tests change curriculums in such a dramatic way that “teachers… worry that more and more of the important things that prepare us for life will be pushed off the curriculum plate to make room for test preparation” (Weaver, 616) .  Teaching students how to fill in bubbles and how to shallowly interpret data does not prepare them for the deep thought and creative interpretation that is required to be successful in the highly competitive working world of today. “According to a recent poll by Public Agenda, 88% of teachers say the amount of attention their school pays to standardized test results has increased in the last several years. And 61% agreed that teaching to the test ‘inevitably stifles real teaching and learning’” (Weaver, 616). How can we support the practice of something that teachers, the people we trust with the future of our nation, feel “inevitably stifles real teaching and learning” (Weaver, 616)?

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about our nation’s focus on standardized testing is that the very nations we are trying to compete with are now changing their education systems from a testing heavy policy to a more flexible system. China has been one of the leading nation in test scores for longer than most of us have been alive, recently they have begun to change from a “one nation-one syllabus tradition” (Zhao, 621) to a flexible system with more choices for the students.  With everyone from Bill Gates to long time politicians claiming that out educations system is broken nearly beyond repair and that “a high-school diploma as become nothing more than a ‘certificate of attendance’” (Paige, 613, it seems that the US will shortly be unable to compete with the rest of the world.  However, “the United States remains a superpower, dominating the world as the most scientifically and technologically advanced nation” (Zhao, 619). How can it be that we are losing the battle with test scores and winning the battle with advancements?  The answer is shockingly simple, growing up in the US fosters creativity and creativity spurs the drive to take the risks and overcome the challenges that an essential part of changing the world. “China, Singapore, South Korea and Japan…have started education reforms aimed at fostering more creativity and innovative thinking among their citizens” (Zhao, 621). While these leading nations are changing their education systems to create a more creative environment the US is calling “for more homework and more study time” (Zhao, 621). In our quest to be the best of the best in all categories are we sacrificing the very thing that sets us apart, our creativity, to compete with nations that are changing to be more like we are now?

                Creativity is what sets our nation apart from the rest of the world, our new focus on standardized test results pushes us towards becoming average rather than a leader when it comes to advancements. In order to continue competing in the global economy the US needs to remain the leader in scientific and technologic advancements. Our current reliance on getting high test scores has resulted in students and graduates that are unable to compete in the real world, the shallow thinking and simple interpretation skills needed to score high on standardized tests kills the creative and innovative spirit that has allowed the US to remain a superpower. The bias and shallowness of the tests make it nearly impossible for all students to score well and do not properly prepare students for entering the increasingly competitive working world. While standardized tests make comparing one student to another faster and simpler, our heavy reliance on their results will end up being our nations downfall.

Tests, Teachers, and Time Wasted

How is it fair that my grade, my feature education, my scholarship, the possibility of me getting the job I want depends entirely on your mood when you grade my paper? How is that a fair and impartial grading system?

I mean NEWS FLASH people my last name is MCCONKIE my paper will never be graded when the teacher is in a good mood, it is impossible. I am right in the middle of the alphabet, right at that point where they have graded almost a hundred essays already but just before the point where they stop for the night. In other words when they are in the worst mood possible. I cannot win in this system it is a total impossibility.

We hear teachers complain about the amount of time they spend grading and correcting our papers and tests almost on a daily basis. Well not to be rude or anything, but um YOU MAKE THE TESTS and ah IT IS YOUR CLASS! You wouldn't have to spend all that time reading and correcting things if you didn't assign them. I know it is a crazy idea but it is true, if you don't assign it then we will not do it. Heck sometimes even if you do assign it we still wont do it.

So please to save us all a lot of wasted time please just stop assigning meaningless essays and papers that you don't want to read. We don't want to write them any more than you want to grade them, and honestly most of what we write in those things are either lies or what you want to hear. We almost never really put our own thoughts out there, why would we? You don't want to hear us debate with the things you told us or make grand leaps in knowledge, you want to hear how smart you are and how much you know. So that's what we tell you, we memorize facts and spit them back at you almost word for word what you told us.

Save the wasted time, don't assign pointless papers.

Free Time

In college they have this policy where you get to make your own schedule, so you can plan your classes around work or family or whatever. This is a great thing if you are a full time college student, but I am not and it leaves me with something very very dangerous, free time. 

 

As an early college student I still have high school classes that I am required to take. This results in me planning half of my classes and my high school councilor planning the other half of it. Needless to say my councilor and I do not see eye to eye. She thinks I need time to study, I think I need two art credits in order to graduate. Guess who won that battle, that's right she did and now I nothing to do from 10:20 until 1:10 every other day and I still need two art credits. How does that seem like a good idea? 

 

Would you like to know what I do with my free time? I do this. I post on my blog and Facebook, I send emails and watch videos on You Tube. This is a great use of my free time, I guess, heck what do I know I am only a sixteen year old who is taking five college classes and doing Youth Court and Youth City Council and being an active member of my church's youth program. But please, tell me whats best for me, I just love it when others boss me around. 

 

P.S yes, I am having a less than happy week.

Public Speaking

Yes, I am in my public speaking class right now.
No, I am not paying attention to this speaker.
Yes, I should be working on my criminal justice paper.
No, I am not going to do that right now.
Yes, it was a bad idea to have this class in a computer lab.
No, I don't want you to move the class.
Yes, I do feel this is a waste of time.
No, I don't plan on dropping out.