Oedipus, Achilles and O. J.--Lessons From Antiquity for Our Time : Simpson case: True tragic heroes embody human flaws, knowledge imparted by the Greeks that should comfort us.

We have been gripped by the story of O. J. Simpson--and with good reason.

Our interest in the case is not motivated simply by a perverse fascination for the bizarre and sensational. There is something much more significant at stake, as is evidenced by the deep sense of sadness and loss that so many of us have experienced. The story of O. J. Simpson is the story of a tragic hero, and like all such stories, it gives us the opportunity to learn something important about ourselves.

A hero is an Everyman who embodies the highest and most noble of human qualities. We see the triumph of the hero as an affirmation of our own capacity for greatness. By the same token, the fall of the hero--his transformation from triumphant to tragic--gives us pain. But why? Common wisdom would hold that the fall of the hero implies the demise of the hero, and that we naturally feel pain in the face of such loss. Contrary to this popular belief, I suggest that the fallen hero remains a hero, and that his fall is itself an integral part of the painful lesson to be learned from him.

It might seem inappropriate, even ludicrous, to connect the name of O. J. Simpson with the notion of tragic heroism, and thus to pack so much meaning into the story of a former football player. But this connection is not too far-fetched when we consider that the world of sports is one of the few remaining public arenas where we modern Americans can still believe in heroes.

By definition, a hero is one who has earned his or her good reputation through individual effort and risk. In our modern world, technology and bureaucracy have increasingly insulated major public figures against genuine risk or loss and have thus diminished our capacity to believe in them as heroes. But the rules of sports still force each individual athlete into a position where he or she alone must take full responsibility for his or her success or failure on the playing field. Unlike in so many other sectors of our society, making excuses for poor performance in sports is still universally regarded as bad etiquette.

If it makes sense to speak of O. J. Simpson as a kind of hero, then his fall--and more important, our reaction to it--can teach us a valuable lesson about the human experience of tragedy. The ancient Greeks continually subjected themselves to the display of tragic heroism through their cultic festivals and dramatic performances. We moderns, by contrast, are reluctant to countenance the possibility of real tragedy. We greeted the news about O. J. with disbelief. Although riveted by the story, we found it difficult to alter our positive image of him in order to make room for a more nuanced, less flattering picture. As the story unfolded on television, there were those who even sought to interpret the behavior of a fugitive O. J. in terms of an earlier, triumphant vision of him. In a macabre display of self-deception, fans lined the freeways and streets of Los Angeles and cheered him on as if he were still a running back evading his opponents, not a murder suspect wanted by the police.

Why do we receive news of a hero’s fall with such astonishment? Our disbelief, I suggest, is rooted in our desire to have heroes who are incapable of evil. This one-sided view, however, overlooks what it really means to be a hero.

Heroic greatness must be earned, and it is earned through the hero’s harnessing and creative reworking of otherwise ignoble impulses. Genuine excellence, in other words, requires the difficult and sometimes painful effort of self-discipline. True excellence, however, does not imply the complete repression or exclusion of potentially destructive urges. If the capacity for evil did not exist at all, then the hero’s triumph would already be guaranteed and his or her greatness would not really be earned. The capacity to achieve great things thus entails at least the possibility of evil. Someone who entirely lacks the capacity to do harm can also do no good.

The ancient Greeks were keenly aware of this dangerous link between human excellence and evil. Thus all great Greek heroes struggled with extraordinary strengths that could be developed in the direction of human goodness or depravity. To be a hero, for the Greeks, meant living perpetually and precariously in the vicinity of ruin. The confidence of Oedipus enabled him to confront the Sphinx and thereby liberate the Thebans from bondage, but it was this same confidence that rigidified into arrogance and prevented Oedipus from recognizing the suffering that he himself had brought upon the people. Achilles was the greatest Greek warrior because of his fierce pride, but this same pride drew him into a prolonged dispute with Agamemnon and thus almost destroyed the Greek war effort against the Trojans. Might we not speculate that

O. J.’s desire for recognition, which was certainly one motivating force behind his success on the gridiron, could have also sparked rage against a woman who perhaps no longer recognized him as he wished?

According to the ancient Greek vision, no great achievement is possible without the ever-abiding risk of disaster. Our incredulous fascination with the case of O. J. Simpson reveals how we, by contrast, would rather immunize our heroes against the possibility of evil. Could this be a symptom of our reluctance to accept a fundamental truth about the human condition?