Today at the thrift shop, I picked up three books for my daughter: Sophie’s World, a collection of antique myths, and one about Native American culture. I told her, “You can choose one book to start with.” She went for the myths. Then she asked if she could choose a story inside it. Of course—why not? A bit of agency makes all the difference.
She leafed through and settled on the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. I asked her why. At first she said, “Because it’s interesting.” I pressed her a little: “But out of so many stories, why this one?” She looked at me and said, word for word: “Because I wanted to see if Agamemnon is the asshole everyone makes him out to be.”
That’s when it struck me: she wasn’t just reading a myth. She was testing a verdict.
For anyone less familiar with the background: Agamemnon was the commander of the Greek armies during the Trojan War. Before they could set sail for Troy, the winds refused to blow, and an oracle declared that the goddess Artemis demanded a sacrifice. The victim: Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia. Some versions say he tricked her into coming, promising her marriage to Achilles, only to kill her at the altar. Other versions soften it—Artemis rescues her at the last moment. But the dark version stuck: Agamemnon sacrifices his own child to advance the war.
That act becomes the seed of his destruction. When he finally returns victorious from Troy, his wife, Clytemnestra—furious at the killing of their daughter—murders him in revenge. That sets in motion the cycle of vengeance told in Aeschylus’ Oresteia.
So the story is heavy with questions of guilt, necessity, and blame. Was Agamemnon a monster who chose ambition over family? Or was he a trapped commander, forced into a no-win choice by gods and destiny?
After a while my daughter came to my room and said: "Menelaus pushed Agamemnon into it". That moment floored me, because it showed she’s starting to see what many adults struggle with—that life is not always black and white. Agamemnon is not simply a monster, and Menelaus is not simply innocent. Pressure, loyalty, and circumstance bend choices in ways that make clean judgments impossible.
At eleven, most kids are still working within what psychologists call the conventional stage of morality. Authority and consensus tell them what’s right and wrong. A story is “true” because it’s in a book, or because adults say so. But her move—I’ll find out myself whether Agamemnon deserves the blame—is something different. It’s closer to the post-conventional stage, which usually doesn’t show up until adolescence or adulthood. It’s the moment when you realize morality is not simply inherited but examined.
Piaget would call it a step into formal operations: thinking not just about stories, but about the interpretations of stories. She saw that “Agamemnon the villain” is not a fact but a perspective. And she wanted to test that perspective herself. That’s meta-thinking.
And here’s the beautiful irony: she’s already reading tragedy as tragedy. Because the Greeks didn’t hand down simple moral lessons. They forced their audiences into uncomfortable questions, into gray zones where necessity and choice collide. The plays never let you sit back with easy answers. To approach them critically—to suspend judgment until you’ve seen for yourself—is exactly how they were meant to be read.
So what does this mean at eleven? It doesn’t mean she won’t still lean on authority sometimes. But it does mean she has tasted autonomy of judgment. And once you’ve tasted that, it doesn’t go away.
In our time, when so much discourse rewards parroting the party line, I find it extraordinary that a child can quietly say, “I’ll decide for myself.” That’s philosophy in its purest form—not the lecture hall version, but the lived one.
It began with a thrift shop, three books, and a small choice. But hidden inside that choice was something immense: the courage to think with her own mind.