“Never Utter His Name”

The Politics of Kleos and Andreia

For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of destiny towards the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight besides the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.
(Il. 9.410–16, trans. Lattimore)

One of the most striking reactions in the first few days of media coverage following the recent tragedy at Umpqua Community College was the attempt to limit discussion of the perpetrator, Christopher Harper-Mercer. The strongest expression of this position was articulated by the Douglas County Commissioner, Chris Boice, who exhorted an audience at a news conference “to never utter his name.” A similar sentiment was shared by the Douglas County Sheriff, John Hanlin, who refused to divulge any details regarding the killer. Sheriff Hanlin would not name Harper-Mercer because he did not wish to inadvertently “give him the credit he probably sought prior to this horrific and cowardly act.” Following these official statements, a discussion among media outlets ensued, as to how to properly cover such a tragedy given this rhetorical tone.

These concerns remind me of the Roman policy of damnatio memoriae, or formally erasing someone historically. The invocation of glory, courage, and cowardice in recent news coverage reveals the rhetorical minefield we navigate when discussing mass shootings in America. As students of kleos aphthiton (unwilting glory), classicists are particularly well-equipped to dissect these heavily politicized rhetorical positions and redirect conversations to the tragedy itself.

Such official comments have been made after other mass shootings in recent months in an attempt to avoid focusing on the perpetrators. Grieving communities have come together to remember and celebrate the fruitful lives of victims who perished in senseless tragedy and to become stronger in the face of adversity. Additionally, community officials have often been hesitant to release biographical details in order to deprive perpetrators of desired notoriety and to prevent copycat shootings (the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was reportedly obsessed with Columbine). Infamy is not a motivation unique to the Umpqua shooting. Andreas Lubitz, the suicidal pilot who crashed his plane into the French Alps, said he wanted to “do something that will change the entire system and everyone will know my name and remember it.”

But avoiding substantive discussions of Harper-Mercer while actively forming the narrative of the Umpqua shooting is problematic. In many ways, this self-censorship is a radical form of historical nostalgia: instead of misinterpreting the past, we are told it is better to neglect this key part of the tragic narrative entirely. In refusing to acknowledge the killer, we run the risk of failing to recognize an uncomfortable truth: the shooter was also a product of our current society. Through examining the killer we engage in the uncomfortable process of examining our own cultural problems.

While I understand the impulse to limit the attention paid to killers, I believe we need a dialogue where we might be able to discuss perpetrators, victims, and survivors proportionally. The media tends to portray these varied experiences as competing voices, but we need to understand all three to make sense of tragedy. In other words, unlike the rhetoric of epic heroes competing to be the best of the Achaeans, our understanding of tragedy does not have to be a zero-sum game or a singular narrative. Our public discourse should have room for praising survivors, honoring victims, and contemplating how Harper-Mercer committed such an atrocity.

For no man is good in war unless he can endure
the sight of bloody slaughter and, standing close,
can lunge at the enemy. This is excellence, this the
best human prize and the fairest for a young man to win.
(Tyrtaeus, West Fragment 12.10–14, trans. Gerber)

The narratives we develop from these tragedies reveal what we might call prototypical andreia as expressed above in Tyrtaeus Fragment 12. Many of the Umpqua survivors were lionized as heroes. Two prominent examples are Chris Mintz, a former soldier who was shot five times while holding Mercer back by the door of a classroom, and Treven Anspach, whose body covered Lacey Scroggins, giving the impression that she too was deceased and thus saving her life.

In the verses of Tyrtaeus there is an evolution from the individualism of the epic hero of the Iliad towards the communal hero of the polis. So too are the Umpqua victims memorialized for their altruistic actions. We recognize such displays of courage easily in martial contexts. As Hans van Wees has noted, “In classical Greece, the word ‘manliness’ (andreia) simply meant courage, and the standard euphemistic phrase for dying on the battlefield was ‘becoming a good man.’”

This altruistic character should absolutely be praised, but we should not let it be used in a way to deflect more difficult questions. Yes, Chris Mintz is a hero, but he is being used as a red herring: the logic of “good guys with guns” is implicitly operative when we praise the “good guy without a gun” who still saved some of his classmates. Praising heroes is just as much a political choice as discussing gun control is.

By solely focusing on victims and survivors, we risk simplifying the narrative and forgetting the root causes of mass shootings in America. We must find a way to validate the grief of victims while holding our culture accountable for the senseless destruction of so many lives. Certainly, America’s faith is renewed in selfless action and civic service, but surely it would be preferable if the shootings had never occurred.

This rhetorical shift is not unique or necessarily deceiving (consider the story of Professor Liviu Librescu in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting or the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary). But celebrating these people does not help us come to terms with why they died or how to prevent future mass murders. By refusing to acknowledge Harper-Mercer, Sheriff Hanlin has essentially removed such questions from the table. While the sheriff’s heart may be in the right place, this position appears to be one of willful ignorance; it allows us to avoid holding our culture morally culpable for these mass killings.

There he killed Thersilochos and Astypylos and Mydon,
Mnesos and Thrasios, and Ainios and Ophelestes.
Now swift Achilleus would have killed even more Paionians
except that the deep-whirling river spoke to him in anger
and in mortal likeness, and the voice rose from the depth of the eddies:
“O Achilleus, your strength is greater, your acts more violent,
than all men’s; since always the very gods are guarding you.”
(Il. 21.209–15, trans. Lattimore)

While the focus on heroic victims and survivors can result in shooters being neglected in the media narrative, in other contexts the perpetrators are also demonized. Cowardice is the concept that completes this rhetorical binary, as expressed in Tyrtaeus and the juxtaposition of shamefulness (aischros) and beauty (kalos). Just as courage can be used rhetorically to avoid confronting the entirety of a tragic narrative, so too can cowardice be used to dismiss perceived enemies with whom we do not wish to engage. Ultimately, both extremes are problematic.

The perception of cowardly attackers is best exemplified in terrorist attacks, a strong parallel to mass shootings. In our post-9/11 cultural environment, Susan Sontag and Bill Maher were criticized for questioning whether terrorists really were cowardly, since they were clearly willing to commit actions that would result in their own death. As Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen note, Americans were “appalled at the thought of justifying the terrorist by giving them credit for courage.” Furthermore, this incident shows “how deeply political and rhetorical language can be, and to what extent it is colored by our perception of reality[.]”

Since language actively shapes our perception of reality, we must be honest when forming mass shooting narratives; in the case of Dylann Roof in particular, mass murder is an act of domestic terrorism. While Harper-Mercer and other shooters may differ in motivations, their actions instill similar societal reactions to senseless loss. (Even the term “senseless” can be problematic since it implies that pondering these events is a hopeless exercise.)

This is something we as Americans are uncomfortable acknowledging. It is easy to condemn a cultural Other, however it might be constructed. But when the threat is part of the fabric of our own society, we struggle to confront that reality. A young white male who shoots down innocent victims runs so contrary to traditional American narratives that we cannot admit to this trend. To question why mass shootings happen is to question our (misplaced) fundamental assumptions about autonomy and masculinity in this country. Dismissing the shooter as a cowardly lunatic is far easier to do, but it fails to get at the psychology of a mass killer and how these attributes reflect wider societal issues (e.g. misogyny and racism).

To dismiss foreign terrorists and domestic shooters as cowardly is a grave mistake. We do not write off the Iliad as glorifying psychotic killing (although it does to an extent). Such a simplistic interpretation would be perverse, along the lines of Andreas Lubitz’s understanding of undying glory. The reason we read and teach this epic is that it tells a complete narrative, not just the aristeia of the Homeric heroes but the undoing of their character (a central theme in tragedy). The murderous Achilles feels wronged by society and withdraws; his rage is what makes him unrecognizable yet all too human as described in the passage above, strikingly similar to our American tragedies (cf. the death of Lycaon, Il. 21.35–135; death of Hektor, Il. 22.247–366).

The Iliad accounts for both the individual and their society. This is best expressed in the ekphrastic passage describing the shield of Achilles, which stands as a microcosm of the idealized kosmos (Il. 18.478–608). The epic provides a context we lack when discussing our own modern day tragedies; it succeeds where Tyrtaeus falls short. While the verses of Tyrtaeus praise prototypical andreia, like our modern media narratives, they fail to account for the entire story. As a result, critics have dismissed Tyrtaeus as little more than propaganda. In contrast, the Iliad provides a different lens to indict our own society’s shortcomings. Concepts of courage, heroism, and manliness are revealed as far more complex than death on the battlefield.

It is worth noting that this uncomfortable tension in acknowledging the humanity of others, ancient heroes or modern mass killers, was more recently on display in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. Few in Boston found it acceptable that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body might be buried within the city limits. For a grieving community, seeing Tsarnaev as human was too much. Daniel Mendelsohn’s discussion of this dilemma and similar tension in Sophocles’ Antigone is equally relevant to the Umpqua shooting. Both the Tsarnaev bombing and the Mercer shooting are, as Mendelsohn says, “the product of an entirely human psyche, horribly motivated by beliefs and passions that are very human indeed — deina in the worst possible sense.” The same could be said of Achilles.

The Iliad is instructive for our grieving community. The conclusion of the epic is a persuasive case study in the power of empathy, something our political environment often lacks. Priam and Achilles come together and acknowledge their mutual pain, setting aside their diametric opposition. Achilles, through Priam, sees Hektor’s humanity and understands Priam’s loss; he realizes that he too has a father who will mourn his own death (Il. 24.468–551).

That is why it is so vital to acknowledge that Harper-Mercer was the shooter at Umpqua Community College. The narrative we portray in the media directly affects policy decisions (or lack thereof). Naming or discussing Harper-Mercer does not necessarily glorify his actions or inspire cult following — it establishes facts. To disregard Harper-Mercer is to willfully ignore what mass murder looks like, and to turn a blind eye to why mass shootings continue to happen in America.

Luke Madson is a graduate of Knox College currently living in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently in the process of applying to graduate programs in order to study classics.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Paideia Institute.