You
have received many wounds for your country.
-Third Citizen
Coriolanus Act II, scene iii, line 106
Wounds. This is the scene where Caius Marcius Coriolanus goes
amongst the commoners to ask them for their consent for him to be their leader.
Apparently, one of the things he’s supposed to do is to literally show them his
war wounds. Today’s Totally Random line is one citizen mentioning these wounds
and expecting Caius Marcius to show them. He does not. Other than that, though,
he appears to have appeased them. Or so we think.
I have to say, almost every time I look at a piece of this
play, I’m brought back to the future. 2020 politics is so much like what we see
in this play. This guy, Coriolanus, does what they tell him to do, irrespective
of his disdain for the common man. The commoners accept what he’s done, and it
looks like we’re all set to swear him in as the leader. And then a few of the
commoners’ leaders give a little push in the opposite direction and the
commoners take away their blessing. I’m not painting either side of the today’s
political spectrum in one particular light or another, but I am saying that all
of us are so susceptible to manipulation. I wonder how much of the real truth any
of us are dealing with. And then you can start asking ‘what is truth’.
Oh boy.
Wounds.
And what about the political system that this is a vestige of, to say nothing of the current political system of this place? These are the terra cotta warriors of Xian, China. They're an army of life sized statues that were built for the grave of a Chinese emperor. Did he have wounds to show his people? He must have had something to show his people in order to get all this for his burial.
We live in a crazy world.
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