Hope 10 – The Choice of Hercules could be “brilliant”, like Odysseus

Over the course of these Hope-themed postings, I have mentioned Hercules from time to time, mostly to say that Hercules is the focus of the activities I am designing for autistic children. With the current posting, I am going to turn in more depth to Hercules – to give a sense of why I have chosen this figure. I shall start by following up on one thing I looked at in the previous posting namely the activities developed around another mythological character by Nicola Grove and Keith Park. This is Odysseus. As I said in the previous posting, one reason Grove and Park pick Odysseus is his enduring popularity. Because of just how rooted Odysseus is in a shared cultural heritage, there is the potential for opening up a cultural experience to people who might find such experiences difficult to access. I shared some views a few views I have around this... I am going to keep reflecting on these, but, for now, I am going to turn to some of the other reasons for the selection of Odysseus.

According to Grove and Park, the story of Odysseus is “a brilliant story which everyone can enjoy”. As they continue, this story can enable a teacher to “nourish the imagination and emotions of students, as well as providing them with practical skills.” Among the reasons why the Odysseus story is so “brilliant” and so full of potential for stimulating the imagination, and for engaging the emotions, is its concern with a traveller, who keeps reaching new places. There is a good fit here with Hercules who, like Odysseus, is a traveller who keeps reaching new places: some pleasant, some strange, some full of dangers to negotiate.

This leads me to a second point about the parallels between Hercules and Odysseus. Hercules is often regarded as one who achieves his successes thanks to his distinctive strength. This is often true – but not always. Hercules often finds a way to succeed in a given task though cunning, a quality above all linked with Odysseus among classical mythological figures. But Hercules, like Odysseus, keeps getting himself out of a particular difficulty not so much by brute force but by finding some clever solution. The image that illustrated my previous posting showed him wielding his club above the Hydra, one of his victims, but how he defeats the hydra isn’t though superior strength, but is through finding a way to stop the hydra being able to grow new heads. Hercules does this, mind you, by an act of violence – by searing the severed neck of each Hydra head he cuts off.

This takes me back to the heading of one of my previous postings: “But Hercules is horrible…” He often is. But what I am going to look at is Hercules as the hero in a strange place: the hero when he finds himself in a location which is overpowering – a place whose rules he needs to work out. This is a hero who needs to work out what to do in this place because, here, he is faced with making a choice: a choice over the road he will take from this point on, and a choice between two very different ways of living – hard work and pleasure. It is a stark choice, and choices that people encounter in life are not likely to be so stark. However, for autistic people, choice-making can be especially difficult, and what I would like to propose is the following. Hercules’s choice can provide an opportunity to engage with choice-making. And there can be a fit with other aspects of being autistic too, including feeling out of place in some spaces and, conversely, finding other spaces pleasant or reassuring. Another is going though sensory and emotional experiences, both pleasant ones and ones that are so intense that they are too much to deal with.

In the next posting, I shall turn in earnest to this particular episode: the choice Hercules faces and makes.