The Incidents Which Most Effectively Dramatize Pentheus's Blindness in "The Bacchae"

In The Bacchae, the author Euripides attempts to show the potentially negative consequences that await people who chose to not listen to reason, who refuse to open their narrow minds to the possibilities of other explanations and existences, and those that act before they think. Euripides does this through the character of Pentheus. Pentheus is “blind” to the truths in front of him, to the words of those who have more knowledge and reason than he, and most importantly, to the consequences of his actions and his own fate if he doesn’t open his eyes.

Euripides first hints at Pentheus’s blindness in the words of Dionysus, who is quite irritated that Pentheus will not worship him, much less acknowledge he is a god. In lines 44-50, Dionysus expresses his discontent in Pentheus’s refusal to recognize that he is a god, and hints – foreshadows – that there will be negative consequences.

…that Pentheus opens war on deity in me,

wards me off his sacrifice,

cuts me from his prayers…

Very well,

I’ll show myself to him and all of Thebes a god indeed.

And when everything has happened as I wish,

I’ll remove myself to another land

And there reveal myself.

The fact that Dionysus and Pentheus are cousins serves to only increase the frustration – even hurt – that Dionysus must feel in Pentheus’ rejection of his godhood. It is bad enough to have one’s godhood rejected by anonymous strangers, much worse when rejected by blood relatives.

When Pentheus comes upon Cadmus and Tiresias, he is so full of himself and his irritation with those who are worshipping Dionysus, he doesn’t realize at first that they are dressed in the costumes of the worshippers of Dionysus, further emphasizing that Pentheus is blind to the most obvious of “truths” in front of him. Tiresias and Cadmus both try to get Pentheus to see the truth. Cadmus goes so far as to remind Pentheus of the horrors that await those who dare challenge and mock the gods by reminding him of what happened to Actaeon. Still, Pentheus refuses to listen to reason.

You know the miserable mistake Actaeon made:

How those meat-eating dogs of his

(which he had reared himself)

tore him piecemeal in these very dells.

All because he bragged

He was a better huntsman than

The goddess Artemis.

Do not risk the same. (337-340)

Later, a soldier brings a manacled Dionysus to Pentheus, and tells him that the women they had locked up had all escaped in a manner not logically explainable. Pentheus orders that the handcuffs be removed and then mocks Dionysus, teasing him about his curly hair and clear skin. Once again, Pentheus is blind – he ignores the impossibility of the women escaping on their own and further seals his fate by mocking Dionysus. Dionysus, to his credit, tries several times to get Pentheus to recant his disbelief of him as a god by using some logic - “every land in Asia celebrates his dance” (482) – as if to say, look, all of these people see the truth, why can’t you? Pentheus derides this by saying that “foreigners have much less sense than Greeks” (483). Even when Dionysus bluntly tells Pentheus that he is a blasphemer and cannot see (502) Pentheus doesn’t listen… doesn’t see.

Tiresias, Cadmus, Dionysus, the soldier, even the chorus have all attempted to get Pentheus to see that Dionysus is a god: through reason, reminders of mistakes others had made, by recounting what they themselves had seen, and by telling him directly. Dionysus truly makes him “blind” by altering what Pentheus sees when he bound Dionysus.

Ha! There I made him look so foolish:

For when he thought that he was binding

Me he did not even touch me.

He was gorged on pure delusion. (616-620)

Not only has Pentheus refused to listen to others, he later refuses to accept what he sees with his own eyes: he is surprised that Dionysus had escaped from the chains he himself had put on him (647).

Dionysus proceeds to create illusions – and realities – that all serve to make Pentheus look like a fool… a blind fool. He has Pentheus deal with a bull, exhausting himself with attempts to tie up the bull, he stoked the fire at the Tomb of Semele causing Pentheus to think the palace was on fire, he ran around the palace with his sword trying to find the escaped Dionysus, and more. Dionysus created all of these situations for Pentheus to exhaust him and make him more susceptible to the major mind-game that he is about to pull on him.

Still, Dionysus gives Pentheus one more chance to open his eyes and recognize that there is a god in front of him. A herdsman comes and tells Pentheus that he witnessed the followers of Dionysus tearing animals up with their bare hands, plundered villages and more; and that they followed their violence by drinking blood. Such behavior is hardly believable in women, to do so much with bare hands and carry off their loot on their shoulders without even a rope to hold it in place could only be done with the aid of a god (725-770). Once again, Pentheus refuses to even consider that this could be the work of a god, and tosses it off as mass hysteria (776).

Dionysus gives up on trying to convert Pentheus, and talks him into dressing up like a woman so he can go and see for himself the bacchants. He makes “his mind unsteady” (850) and, ironically enough, it is only then – with his mind blurred by Dionysus – that Pentheus finally sees that Dionysus is not the simple mortal he thinks he sees, but perhaps may be a god.

…and a bull seems to beckon me –

He walks before me.

Now I’d say your head was horned…

Or were you an animal all the while?

For certainly you’ve changed –

Oh, into a bull.

Like the animals and villages before, Pentheus ends up torn to pieces by the bare hands of the women, especially his own mother. Ultimately, it is not Dionysus who caused Pentheus’s demise, it is Pentheus’s own blindness - to the reason of those around him, to his own reason, and to what he himself had witnessed with his own eyes - that causes his demise.

Works Cited

Euripedes. Three Plays of Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, The Bacchae. Trans. Paul Roche. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974.

Written for Survey of Humanities I class at Pikes Peak Community College, 6th October 2003