Incorporating Veterans’ Issues in Classroom Discussions of Greek Literature

Lillian Doherty (University of Maryland, College Park)

I will introduce the work of Jonathan Shay and Bryan Doerries, two authors who have used ancient Greek literature with veterans in different but related ways. Shay, a psychiatrist, worked for many years with Vietnam veterans and found that the Homeric epics in particular were meaningful to them as explorations of their own experience. In particular, the disillusionment, anger, and grief that lead Achilles in the Iliad to commit atrocities echoed the veterans’ reactions to their perceived betrayal by commanding officers and grief at the loss of close comrades. The Odyssey provided the veterans with symbolic equivalences of their experiences with (e.g.) addiction, survivor guilt, and the difficulty of adapting to normal life. Doerries, a classical scholar and author of The Theater of War, uses performances of Greek tragedy to spark discussions among audience members on themes related to the plays. Initially, he focused on audiences of veterans and their families, on the grounds that the playwrights, actors, choruses, and audiences of the ancient productions consisted of soldiers or veterans; like Shay, Doerries found that the performances could have a therapeutic effect for such audiences. Since the pandemic, he has been hosting the performances online and widening his purview to include medical personnel (using Sophocles’ Antigone). I will suggest a number of ways in which these approaches may be introduced in literature classes, either as a component of lectures or as a basis for performance and discussion.