Thersites' Interjection

It is always Act I, Scene I. The hero, his uniform draped over his hulking frame, clumsily yet effectively pressing down upon the two hundred plus years of blue and green warrior rags hidden underneath, strolls solemnly across centre stage. His voice even in tone yet stern and masculine recalls the story of his Father’s life, injecting an unequivocal moral certitude in every enunciated syllable. Though pensive and fair, he slays his foes with terrible accuracy and furtive hatred. Wave after wave of tribulation besets him in this ritual re-staging of his biblical forebears’ epic footsteps. His most vicious appendage, wearing a cold hue of rusted grey, imbues the blood of each enemy, once impure with foreign bodies, with this same story. The mothers and sons of the fallen, expected to lash out in revenge at the loss of their Father, instead cast their arms up in glorious acquiescence. The hero happily accepts their surrender, adopting each as his own under the condition that they never recast the story of this bloody scene. Unsettled by this magnanimity and benevolence, they swear against their former tyrants and slowly melt into the Hero’s body.

The miscegenation is complete.

Appearing gradually in the background the chorus speaks, composed not of the typical unrecognisable mass, but of individuals with a voice each their own. They bear witness to the countless massacres, slowly over time growing evermore oblivious to the violence before them. As the scene reaches its conclusion, the once erupting fountain of blood ceases, leaving only the Hero and his tale. While the audience in its ignorant wisdom remains privy to the shrieks and gasps of the dead and dying, the chorus grows deaf, only recalling the narrative earlier uttered.

Here our Thersites begins to speak. Aware of the contradictions before him, he moves in and out of the scene as a madman - provoking disdain from the characters within, proving wise to the audience without. He and the audience, growing ever impatient at the amassing of transparent myth before them, attempt to interject. But their actions fall in flat folly in the thick forest of semblance.