Sophocles’ Philoctetes is a lean, psychologically complex tragedy about a famous Greek warrior who is marooned on a deserted island by his army after contracting a horrifying and debilitating illness. The play was first performed in 409 BC, yet the title character’s sense of abandonment and search for meaning in his suffering still speaks to us today, perhaps with greater force and urgency than ever before. Through modern medicine and warfare, we are creating a vast subclass of chronically ill patients, like Philoctetes, whom we isolate on deserted islands to live long and suffer alone.

PHILOCTETES
I am wretched, hated
by the gods, if men
don’t know my story.

Those who discarded
my weak body now laugh
silently, while the disease
grows stronger each day.

My son, I am Philoctetes,
the keeper of Heracles’
bow, whom the generals
and Odysseus abandoned.

Suffering from a snakebite,
they left me here to die
in tattered rags, sleeping
in a jagged cave, starving
without much food to eat.

I only wish the same for them.

Imagine my surprise, son,
when I awoke, the tears
I shed, the sound of my
sadness. All of the ships
in the fleet had vanished.
Alone with my infection,
I only knew pain. Time
demanded that I scavenge
for food with this sacred
bow, which saved my life.

I would crawl through deep
mud on stiff knees, scraping
my rotten foot against rocks.
When water was scarce, I
survived by collecting ice.
I spent cold winter nights
without fire, but rubbing
stones together for their spark,
I saved myself from certain death.

So you see. I have everything
I need here in this cave, except
a cure for my endless affliction.

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©2008 The Philoctetes Project, 20 Bond Street, Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10012 | info@philoctetesproject.org