Looking into the Gorgon's Eyes

When I teach mythology, I tell my students that these stories, though they may be thousands of years old, contain truths that can illuminate our lives today. There was a perfect illustration of it last Friday -- and in myth class, too.

One of my students -- call him Rick -- was having a bad day in a bad week in what's become a very bad school year for him. As the bell that signifies the beginning of class rang and the latecomers shuffled in -- '4 that day, a new record -- I heard a burst of cursing in one corner of the room.

I hustled back to find Rick in a staring contest with another young man, whom I'll call Edgar. Edgar has problems of his own, not unlike Rick's. A girl was involved, too -- she was the one swearing. I asked all three to sit down and focus on the class for a change.

As it happened, the students were presenting original myths that had to include all the elements of the Hero Cycle: the obscure birth, the tests and helpers, the journey to a dark place, and the eventual return to normal life. In many Greek hero myths, the hero and the monster he slays have something in common. When the hero kills the monster, he is symbolically slaying one of his own human failings -- his lack of self-control, his greed, or in the case of Perseus, his vanity. Perseus had to look in a mirror in order to kill the Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze could turn men to stone. The monster he saw in the mirror was the worst part of himself.

Things were going along fine until I heard muffled whispering from Rick and Edgar that quickly increased in volume and intensity. I went back again. 'What's going on?' I asked.

'He's looking at me,' hissed Rick.

'Tell him to stop looking at me,' snarled Edgar.

I suggested that Rick go out of the room for a few minutes to settle himself. He left, muttering under his breath. I asked Edgar to calm down, too, and listen to the presentations. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Things quieted down for a while, and after '5 minutes or so, I slipped out of the room during a presentation to retrieve Rick. He went back to his desk. Within a minute, the whispering began again.

This time I moved Edgar to a desk in a different corner, at the front of the room, and tried to turn my attention back to the projects. But it wasn't long before I noticed that Rick was staring fixedly into Edgar's corner. I turned around and saw the same hostile glare on Edgar's face.

I turned back to Rick and said, 'Don't make eye contact with him.'

'Make him stop looking at me,' he replied.

Who was the hero? Who was the monster? I didn't know what they were angry about. Adolescent males can go to battle stations in an instant over a girl, a shove, a word, a look. Though Rick and Edgar have difficulty in school, they are both basically nice guys. I just wanted them to come back from whatever dark place they had gone.
I could feel the rest of the class watching. Measuring the distance and angles, I moved to a position directly between the two boys, so that neither could see the other. I hoped that would break the spell, and it did. We got through the rest of the class without incident.

But I won't forget their faces -- like stone masks. They had looked into the Gorgon's eyes and seen themselves.