Men and Scars

When Odysseus was a young man, the legend holds, he visited his grandfather Autolycus, who had named the future hero as a baby. Odysseus feasts with his grandfather and a group of uncles and then joins them for a hunt on the wooded slopes of Mount Parnassus. When the men and dogs flush a giant boar from his lair, Odysseus, though he is the youngest in the group, is the first to lunge for the beast with his spear. But the animal dodges the blow and gores the brave lad above his knee. Undeterred, Odysseus rebounds and runs his weapon through the boar, slaying it. His uncles take care of the carcass, bind the young man’s deep gash, and bring him back to Autolycus’ home to heal. After Odysseus recuperates, he returns to Ithaca with a new scar, and a new story; when his parents ask him how he got the wound, he recounts with pride the way in which he held his own in a group of men.
It’s a rite of passage for Odysseus — his first big hunt and chance to test his courage and learn the skills and male cooperation essential for success in battle. The episode also ends up playing a role in a much different homecoming decades later.
When Odysseus returns as an older man to Ithaca after 20 years of epic fighting and wandering, he initially keeps his true identity as king a secret. Disguised as a beggar, he plots to kill the suitors who have tried to usurp his position while he’s been away, and works to discern whether his wife Penelope has remained faithful. After telling her he’s crossed paths with Odysseus, and sharing information about his journey, Penelope so appreciates his tales that she asks his childhood nurse, Eurycleia, to wash his feet.
As the still-disguised king places his bare legs into a pot of water and Eurycleia begins to bathe them, she immediately recognizes his old hunting scar and knows who sits before her. The aged nurse’s eyes fill with tears and she exclaims to her former charge: “My dear child, I am sure you must be Odysseus himself, only I did not know you till I had actually touched and handled you.”
As one classicist has observed, “While the scar proves Odysseus’ identity…the episode that produced the scar helped to establish that identity in the first place.”
In other words, gaining the scar helped make Odysseus into a man; and forever after, it marked him as one.
Physical scars have held a long and interesting place in the history and anthropology of masculinity. Scars that resulted from being branded as punishment for a crime could be ostracizing; and ones left from being whipped as a slave were emasculating. But scars earned on the hunt, in battle, and in pursuing various adventures were, and are, often seen as marks of honor and a source of both public and personal pride. Today we’ll offer a few snapshots of how men have viewed their scars through time and around the world.

Scars as Tokens of Initiation

 

Intentional scarification has been practiced in many cultures around the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. Scars were in some ways the equivalent of tattoos for these peoples, as darker skin is more difficult to ink, but more prone to producing visible, pronounced, keloid scars.
Scars were carved into the skin with shells, flints, or sharpened sticks, and could take various forms. The wounds were sometimes rubbed with ash, lime, the down of birds, or the fur of a hunted animal to add color, and to irritate the wound so it would form a more pronounced scar. The particular design of the scar could denote a man or woman’s social and marital status, lineage, and membership in a particular tribe or clan. The scar was a visible symbol of who you were and the people to which you belonged. In fact, when a warrior captured a member of an enemy tribe, he would sometimes superimpose the symbol of his clan onto the scar of the prisoner which symbolized his. The message was clear, and to a man whose lineage was his whole identity, devastating: You’re ours now.
Scars were often given as part of a young man’s initiation into manhood. Enduring the pain of the process without crying out demonstrated courage and self-discipline — qualities necessary to becoming an effective hunter and warrior. A young man who had already experienced the feeling of his flesh being torn and pierced — and endured it well — would be less likely to fear the tip of an enemy’s spear or the tusk of an animal.

For a fascinating look at a scarification ritual, watch this video of the Papua New Guinea receiving their “crocodile teeth” to become men.

A 19^th century observer of a tribe in South Australia described one such ritual, noting that it followed giving the men a new name, and acted as the finale of their coming-of-age ceremony:

“Everything being prepared, several men open veins in their lower arms, while the young men are raised to swallow the first drops of the blood: they are then directed to kneel on their hands and knees, so as to give a horizontal position to their backs, which are covered all over with blood: as soon as this is sufficiently coagulated, one person marks with his thumb the places in the blood, where the incisions are to be made, namely, one in the middle of the neck, and two rows from the shoulders down to the hips, at intervals of about a third of an inch between each cut. These are named Manka, and are ever after held in such veneration, that it would be deemed a great profanation to allude to them in the presence of women. Each incision requires several cuts with the blunt chips of quartz to make them deep enough, and is then carefully drawn apart; yet the poor fellows do not shrink, or utter a sound.”

While the scar a young man received when he was initiated into manhood was significant, it was only a foretoken — a symbol that he was ready and capable of earning a set of even higher marks: spontaneous scars won in the course of fulfilling his foremost roles as hunter and fighter. These were the scars in which men in cultures around the world took the most pride.