In recent postings, I have
reflected on how to rescue Hercules (14 December 2017), liberate Hercules (19 December) and bring out Hercules from elitist enclaves (23 January 2018). Most recently (29 January), I
discussed the Choice of Hercules, the episode that will provide the focus for
my first set of resources for use with autistic children. This current posting
will back up a little and set out what it is about Hercules that makes this
figure especially suitable as the topic for these resources.
For several reasons,
Hercules is an ideal topic for resources for autistic people. Some of these
reasons I have explored already. Firstly, there is how well-known Hercules is.
Thus, engaging with the myth of Hercules can open up cultural experience to
those who might find it harder than others to gain access to cultural or
intellectual life.
Another reason is this –
there is something especially intriguing about Hercules in relation to autism.
I am not seeking to diagnose Hercules as autistic. However, there is a good
deal in the experiences of Hercules that might be recognisable for an autistic
person. Hercules often experiences challenges, and finds solutions to them,
only for a new challenge to present itself. Each time he learns how to overcome
a difficulty, a new situation comes up and he needs to start all over again.
Also, Hercules is never really
at home anywhere. He is often a loner, typically journeying by himself. He is
most often found in marginal spaces, in the wilds beyond cities, where others
do not like to go. Then, when he does enter civilisation, he tends not to be
able to function well. Things go wrong, sometimes disastrously. In the Heracles of Euripides for example, the
Chorus sing of how Heracles has been away – away from his home, away from Greece,
even away from this world - carrying an array of quests. They recount how:
First, he cleared the grove of Zeus of a
lion, and put its skin upon his back, hiding his yellow hair in its fearful
tawny gaping jaws.
Next, they continue:
one day with murderous bow he wounded the race of wild Centaurs,
that range the hills, slaying them with winged shafts. After that, ‘he slew that dappled deer with horns of
gold, that preyed upon the country-folk, glorifying Artemis, huntress queen of
Oenoe.
Then, the Chorus recount:
He mounted on a chariot
and tamed with the bit the horses of Diomedes, that greedily champed their
bloody food at gory mangers with unbridled jaws, devouring with hideous joy the
flesh of men.
After that, they continue:
He slew with his arrows Cycnus, murderer
of his guests, the savage wretch who dwelt in Amphanae.
Then, travelling to the far west:
He came to those minstrel maids, to
their orchard in the west, to pluck from golden leaves the apple-bearing fruit,
when he had slain the tawny dragon, whose terrible coils were twined all round
to guard it and he made his way into ocean's lairs, bringing calm to men that
use the oar.
Returning from the world’s ends Hercules
goes on, actually, to hold up the world according to the Chorus:
He stretched out his hands to uphold the
firmament, seeking the home of Atlas, and on his manly shoulders took the
starry mansions of the gods.
After this, and for once assisted by
others:
He went through the waves of heaving Euxine against the mounted
host of Amazons dwelling round Maeotis, the lake that is fed by many a stream,
having gathered to his standard all his friends from Greece, to fetch the
gold-embroidered raiment of the warrior queen, a deadly quest for a girdle.
Greece won those glorious spoils
of the barbarian maid, and they are safe in Mycenae.
Then, alone again:
He burned to ashes Lerna’s murderous hound, the many-headed hydra,
and smeared its venom on his darts, with which he slew the shepherd of
Erytheia, a monster with three bodies.
After this:
Many another glorious achievement he
brought to a happy issue.
And now, the Chorus conclude, after his
various experiences at various locations of this world, he has left it, for the
underworld:
To Hades' house of tears has he now
sailed, the goal of his labours, where he is ending his career of toil.[1]
 |
| Attic black-figure hydria, c. 510-500 BCE now in Toledo (1955.42). Further information here |
Later in the play, he
finally returns home, to his father, wife and children but, having rescued them
from Lycus, a tyrant who was threating them, he goes mad, kills his wife and
children and would have killed his father, too, had Athena not intervened by
hurling a stone at him that knocked him unconscious. Usually Hercules defeats
others. This is what he does in labours, as narrated by the Chorus. This is
what he is doing on the Attic hydria, pictured here. In an encounter so
significance that it attracts divine witnesses, he is attacking Cycnus, watched
by gods including Ares, the father of his opponent, and Athena, here in her
usual guise of the supporter of Heracles.
Hercules finds it hard to do
what others manage – above all, he finds it hard to live alongside others.
Instead, he tends to stay in a particular location for a short time only before
moving on. He is the great traveller, typically on the move, journeying to a range
of different lands, including those named by the Chorus of the Herakles in their account of the
labours, and even managing to travel to the land of the dead – to Hades. This page on the Perseus website attempts locate the labours in relation to maps of Greece and the wider world known to the ancient
Greeks.
And then, after his death, he
manages what few achieve when he attains godhead among the Olympians. Hercules
is different and other and he sometimes finds it hard to live among people. Yet
he has skills that others lack, including exceptional powers of endurance and
an ability to solve problems that flummox others. As a result, he can serve as
a model both for the hardships that autistic people might experience, for
instance around fitting in, and he can also serve as a model for a different
way of being – and a different way of negotiating the world.
With this in mind, I am
going to present materials geared to enabling autistic children to develop their
own imaginative potential. These resources are aiming to grow into an
intellectual life that is going to be different from other people’s – including
being different from that of any other autistic person. After all, no two autistic
people are the same. As the saying attributed to Stephen Shore goes (quoted here for example), ‘if you’ve
met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.’
However, the resources are
also aiming to achieve that other thing, namely to help skill autistic young
people to engage with the non-autistic world. This includes by finding ways to achieve
such things as reading body language and other non-verbal communications such as
facial expressions. It also includes finding ways to respond to particular cues
from others and recognising cause and effect. Another of my goals is to help
enable someone to see how an action can have consequences and, therefore, how
the present can turn into the future. And another of the goals is to help people
work out what to do in a particular social situation.
Here is a summary of some of
the potential I see in the resources. They have value in various respects,
including how to:
- · understand how people behave
- · recognise emotions – of oneself and others
- · turn a critical eye on what people decide to do at any moment
- · relate to the world
- · work out what to do in a social situation
- · respond to cues, including non-verbal
- · hold a conversation, with one person or with others
- · develop a rapport with others
- · read body language and facial expressions
- · gauge what others are experiencing
- · process information
- · deal with changes in routine
- · recognise the relationship between cause and effect
- · understand how the present can turn into the future
- · imagine!
In the next posting, I shall
begin to show how it is that Hercules – and particular his choice – has this potential.
Cicero said (see the
previous posting’s ‘Ciceronian detour’ for the context – and the reference) ‘we
cannot all have the experience of Hercules.’ But, in some ways, we all can. And
I shall begin, in the next posting, to show how the ‘we’ here includes autistic children. This next posting will move closer to presenting the
resources by saying more about the autistic skills and challenges to which the activities are responding.
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