Meditation 6

I feel like Dionysus is just taking advantage of his powers as a god. He is really just screwing with Pentheus, by mocking him and making him look like a fool in front of his people. He works his magic like a magician to play Pentheus and make a mockery of him. I suppose Pentheus deserved it by not believing that he was a god or fearing the wrath of Dionysus, but I do not think it was fair for him to play Pentheus the way he did. As discussed in class, the idea of a compassionate god is not seen until the Bible rolls around and even then not until the New Testament. I see that Dionysus is just looking out for himself and only takes pride in his work as long as it pleases himself, he has no use for helping humanity or being merciful to people. So Pentheus should know that the gods are vengeful and not willing to help him out, wouldn’t he be more apt to pleasing a god whether he believes in him or not? I would definitely not want to incur the wrath of a Grecian god, isn’t that just basically sealing your own fate? Pentheus is too proud to let anyone get in his way of ruling and his destiny to become great to even accept the truth that Semele was going to bear a god for a son and that Thebes would worship him.

Pentheus was not about to let someone else into his kingdom that would take away from those who followed him; the inability to overcome pride is a regular occurrence in reading Greek tragedy, it seems that everyone is to boastful of themselves to admit that there could be someone better and it always ends in their demise. Pride also has forbidden people from seeing who they really are and that they cannot control their fates but that they will always do what they were destined to do, as with Oedipus. Oedipus cannot overcome his pride to accept that there was nothing he could do to avoid the prophecy that was given to him- while Pentheus cannot overcome his pride to admit that he was wrong about the god Dionysus and admit that he exists, which ultimately ends in his demise.

So in review, I guess that pride is a major factor on both sides of the equation here, Pentheus is too prideful to admit that Dionysus is a god and that he should be worshipped in Thebes just as the rest of the gods are, which causes Dionysus to toy with Pentheus and make a fool out of him because he cannot let pass the pain caused to his mother and him for Pentheus’ refusal to worship him. It seems to me that all these Greek tragedies occur because people can’t get over how wonderful they think they are, the world would be so boring without arrogant and boastful people wouldn’t it?