<\/p>\n
Gender?\u00a0 I Barely Even Know Her<\/h3>\n
During the lifetime of philosopher Socrates, there were many people within Athens who spoke out against him, and the ideas he attempted to spread through the city.\u00a0 One such person was the comedic playwright Aristophanes who wrote the <\/span>Clouds, <\/span><\/i>a play in which he uses the scenario of Socrates taking on an older and stubborn student Strepsiades as a form of commentary on both Socrates, and the society of Athens at the time.\u00a0 Within one passage of the piece from line 656 through line 695, Socrates attempts to teach his student Strepsiades the importance of learning how to correctly gender words within the Greek language.\u00a0 Although this is at first appearance a subject of little importance, it allows Aristophanes to portray Socrates’ belief system, as well as make his own beliefs on Athenian society known.<\/span><\/p>\n The first key takeaway from the<\/span> passage is that it demonstrates Strepsiades\u2019s reluctance to learn anything that does not hold clear importance to him.\u00a0 Throughout the <\/span>Clouds <\/span><\/i>it is demonstrated that Strepsiades has come to the thinkery for purely utilitarian reasons:\u00a0 he wishes to learn to speak so that he may repay those he is indebted to, and he believes that any learning that will not help him to achieve that goal he should not undertake.\u00a0 Yet, in the eyes of Socrates, the very same subjects which Strepsiades deems unimportant are the most important, as he is learning for the sake of learning.\u00a0 This is why, when Strepsiades questions <\/span>on<\/span> why he is being taught how to form gendered words, Socrates\u2019s response is, \u201cFor nothing, by Zeus!\u201d (Aristophanes 693).\u00a0 In a literal sense, Strepsiades was learning how to <\/span>correctly<\/span><\/i> gender words for no reason that would be important to him, hence he is learning it for nothing.\u00a0 Yet Socrates is still teaching him this concept, not because of the utilitarian use of it, but rather because he deems it to be valuable to Strepsiades’ learning.\u00a0 Learning how to correctly use and form gendered words is one of the most basic concepts Socrates believes is important within language, and therefore where Strepsiades’ education must start.\u00a0 It is Strepsiades’ inability to realize the importance of learning something without a utilitarian purpose that results in him being kicked out of the Thinkery.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The second reason this passage is important is that it highlights a belief Socrates, and perhaps even Aristophanes, has about Athenian society: that it is flawed.\u00a0 Greek is a language that, like many others, has genders prescribed to words.\u00a0 In some cases, such as in the cases of animals or names within specific declensions, the gender of the word being used may not match the gender of what is being described.\u00a0 Such is the case, as Socrates describes, for the word chicken in greek; often female chickens would be referred to as alektor, a word with a masculine ending (Aristophanes 666).\u00a0 Socrates is pointing out what he believes to be an inherent flaw within the Greek language: the misuse of genders within certain vocabulary. However, this phenomenon is used as an allusion to a bigger issue within Athenian society: the Athenian people are not infallible. Earlier within the play, On line 367, this is almost explicitly, as Socrates mocks the Athenian gods that Strepsiades believes in: “What Zeus!\u00a0 Don\u2019t babble. Zeus doesn\u2019t exist” (Aristophanes 367).\u00a0 Socrates is using the language of Athens to call attention to a clear flaw within the language that he has noticed and believes he can fix.\u00a0 Although the other problems he has brought to attention within the Athenian way of life may be more difficult both to comprehend and to solve, by using the example of language, Socrates is able to prove that, on some level, there are issues within Athenian society that must be addressed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lastly, it is important to note that while Aristophanes was not a fan of Socrates in any way, that does not mean he fully agreed with the people or societal norms of Athens at the time.\u00a0 Rather he falls somewhere in between the two extremes, which is demonstrated by his critique of both Athens (portrayed by the character Strepsiades) as being too utilitarian and only involved with what can provide use, and Socrates as too philosophical and uninterested in anything of any use.\u00a0 While it is made evident within the ending of the <\/span>Clouds<\/span><\/i> that Aristophanes believes the people of Athens to be closer to the correct way of living than Socrates, this should not underplay the importance within Aristophanes’ critique of Athens.\u00a0 This is an important idea within the <\/span>Clouds <\/span><\/i>as it is mirrored by the passage that has just been analyzed.\u00a0 Similar to Socrates, Aristophanes believes that there are inherent flaws within Athenian society and wishes to make light of them, albeit in a comedic manner.\u00a0 Just as Socrates saw issues within the language being used in Athens, Aristophanes wishes to illuminate the flaws within the values of the people themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n Aristophanes. <\/span>Clouds<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>Texts of Socrates<\/span><\/i>. Trans. Thomas West and Grace West. Cornell University Press, 1998. Lines 656-695.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’m sharing this as a sample of my writing because I believe it shows my interpretive and analytical skills within the writing.\u00a0 This reading by Aristophanes is one that was full of deeper meaning and underlying ideas that added to the piece overall, and through the passage I worked to show the deeper meaning and how it changed and added to what was being said outright within the text.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Context The following passage is an analysis I wrote for a political theory class.\u00a0 At the time we were reading many works surrounding Socrates, such as Plato’s Apology, and Aristophanes’s Clouds\u00a0(the latter of which the following passage is about).\u00a0 The following passage is analyzing a passage from Clouds in which Socrates and one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3349,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","czr-hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3349"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":16,"date":"2020-07-06T19:33:15","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T19:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/spatemplate\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2021-10-07T21:50:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T21:50:17","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t Hi! My name is Alayna Chichester! I’m a lifelong Granite-Stater, with a passion for social equity.\u00a0 Yes, you read that right; equity NOT equality.\u00a0 \u00a0While equality is often seen as the goal in modern politics, I strive to see a world with more equity, where people are not given the exact same resources, but rather the resources they need to thrive.\u00a0 \u00a0In my pursuit of aiding in the growth of social equity I’ve worked in various positions including, serving on the New Hampshire Youth Legislative Advisory Council, a group that advises the New Hampshire House of Representatives on youth issues for two years, and most recently worked as an legislative intern within a Senate office.\u00a0 I am currently enrolled as an undergraduate at American University studying political science and economics.\u00a0 I live with the belief that if you have the ability to you should always try to help others, and that is what drives me.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\tReflection<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ac8605a\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1666\/2020\/07\/DSC_8555-682x1024.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t