In the Sophocles play Electra, the character of Electra is more involved and stronger. Orestes is on his way back to Mycenae and plots revenge for his father death. While Orestes is travelling back Electra is seen arguing with Chrysothemis about her accommodation with their father’s murders. Electra is still enraged about her father’s murder; she resents her mother and wants Orestes to avenge Agamemnon. When Orestes arrives at the palace no one recognizes him, a messenger then announces that Orestes as died, upon this knowledge Electra is devastated. Her sister Chrysothemis tells Electra that she has seen Orestes lock of hair on Agamemnon burial site. Electra dismisses this and proposes that she and Chrysothemis are now responsible for avenges …show more content…
While Orestes hides he watches Electra mourn her fathers murder. Electra is more involved in the beginning of this play rather than the end. Not only is Electra mourning the loss of her father she is also infuriated by the treatment of her mother. Electra appeals to the sprit of The Fury and Agamemnon. Electra’s motivation for revenge is based upon her father’s death but also because she has been deprived of love, wealth, and marriage. Clytemnestra has reduced Electra’s status to a slave woman because she wants Aegisthus children to inherit power not Agamemnon’s children. Electra believes that what she is entitled to is being taken away from her. She is around seventeen years old, which is far older than most women are when they marry. Electra blames Clytemnestra for denying her of her rightful privileges as the daughter of a queen and king. While Electra laments her father death she notices a lock of hair on his grave, she identifies this as Orestes hair. The two siblings plan to avenge their father. Electra convinces and encourages Orestes to go along with his plan to avenge their father. In this play Electra’s main purpose is to persuade and convince Orestes fulfill his duty. She sets up the raw emotion felt by herself and Orestes and why this must be done. Electra wants revenge for Agamemnon and is driven by the
The Oresteia trilogy follows a series of murders among the family of Orestes. In the first play, Agamemnon, the blood of Orestes’ father, Agamemnon, and his father’s war prize, Casandra, spills at the hands of Orestes’ mother, Clytamnestra. Following suit, Orestes avenges his father’s cold-blooded murder in the second play, The Libation Bearer, by killing his mother and her lover, Aegisthus. The acts of revenge by Orestes come to a climax in the third and final play of the trilogy, The Eumenides. With a monumental trial between Orestes and the Furies, a question of justification arises. Did Orestes have a justified reason to commit matricide? Or did his actions reveal a dark, unjustified moment of kin murder? Orestes’ murder of his mother, Clytamnestra, is justified because of the gods’ interference throughout the Oresteia trilogy.
Gender is made explicit as a theme throughout the Oresteia through a series of male-female conflicts and incorrectly gendered characters dominated by the figure of Clytemnestra, a woman out of place. This opposition of gender then engenders all the other oppositions of the trilogy; conflicts of oikos and polis, chthonic and Olympian, old and young can be assigned to female and male spheres respectively. In this essay I will look at how the polis examines itself in terms of gender by focusing on the Eumenides' exploration of the myth of matriarchy, issues of the conflict between oikos and polis and the use of speech within the polis. I will then look at how these themes are brought together in the trial and the play provides an image of resolution. Many of these issues are set up in the opening speech of the priestess Pythia as already resolved and are then reconfirmed by the trial itself and closing images order.
One of the most emotional and moving scenes in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet is in Act III, Scene I lines 90-155 in which the title character becomes somewhat abusive toward his once loved girlfriend Ophelia. It is interesting to examine the possible motives behind Hamlet's blatant harshness in this "Get the to a nunnery" scene toward the easily manipulated and mild mannered girl. While watching Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson's film adaptations of the play, the audience may recognize two possibilities of the many that may exist which may explain the Prince's contemptible behavior; Kenneth Branaugh seems to suggest that this display of animosity will help the troubled man convince his enemies that he is in fact demented, whereas the Mel Gibson work may infer that Hamlet's repressed anger toward his mother causes him to "vent" his frustrations upon Ophelia, the other female of importance in his life.
The book Electra was written approximately in 450- 440 BC by Sophocles. It is a Greek tragedy that has strong connections to Homer’s Odyssey. The book is biased on the story of Electra and her brother Orestes, they take vengeance in their mother and Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus for murdering their father Agamemnon after he returns home from the Trojan War.
From the end of Act I, the point at which Hamlet judges it may be prudent to feign madness - to "put an antic disposition on" (I.v.181) - much of the first half of the play concerns characters trying to determine why the prince's melancholy has evolved into seeming insanity. Each of the major players in Elsinore has a subjective impression of the reason for Hamlet's madness; indeed, in each of these misconceptions there is an element of the truth. At the same time, however, the nature of these selective perceptions provides insight into the characters who form them. And finally, these varied perspectives are notable in their effect upon the dynamic of the conflict between Hamlet and Claudius, and upon the king's increasing paranoia.
human nature that necessitates justice and power. At the end of his series of plays in the Oresteia, Aeschylus tells the story of Orestes and the progression of justice. The final play, The Eumenides, ends with a struggle between different definitions of justice. Orestes is a youth charged with matricide which is punishable by death according to the Furies and the traditional method of restoring equity. Athena, however, offers a form of justice that considers the context of a person’s actions when restoring equity. In the case of Orestes, the context of his case is the guidance given to him by Apollo and the wrongs that he had suffered as a result of his mother, Clytaemestra. Athena’s understanding of human nature is that the ideas of compassion and empathy coexist with the concept of justice in the minds of most people. As a result, Athena establishes a jury comprised of the peers of Orestes so that they may judge him with understanding for both the context of Orestes’s actions and the need for justice for the death of Cl...
Aeschylus' The Oresteia features two characters burdened by seemingly hopeless decisions. First is Agamemnon, king of Argos, whose army was thwarted by the goddess, Artemis. Agamemnon was faced with the decision to call off the army's sail to Troy, and thus admit defeat and embarrassment, or to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to satisfy Artemis whom had stopped the winds to delay Agamemnon's fleet. Second is Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who was given the choice by Apollo to avenge his father's murder, thus committing matricide, or face a series of torturous consequences. Although both Agamemnon and Orestes were faced with major dilemmas, their intentions and their characters are revealed through their actions to be markedly different.
The act of revenge in classical Greek plays and society is a complex issue with unavoidable consequences. In certain instances, it is a more paramount concern than familial ties. When a family member is murdered another family member is expected to seek out and administer revenge. If all parties involved are of the same blood, the revenge is eventually going to wipe out the family. Both Aeschylus, through "The Oresteia Trilogy," and Sophocles, through "Electra," attempt to show the Athenians that revenge is a just act that at times must have no limits on its reach. Orestes and his sister Electra, the children of the slain Agamemnon, struggle on how to avenge their father's death. Although unsure what course of action they must take, both brother and sister are in agreement that revenge must occur. Revenge is a crucial part of Greek plays that gives the characters a sense of honor and their actions a sense of justice.
There is a distinction between men and women within the Oresteia that presents a detachment within the house of Atreus and in turn Athens. However, the three plays of the Oresteia provide a conclusion to the battle of the sexes. Characters within the play show their side of misogyny or misandry. It is quite obvious that the women are misanadvertising, while the men are misogynists. This division between men and women within the Oresteia reflects the division within the household, but is overcome through women rather than men.
In areas where Clytemnestra contrasts Agamemnon (she is strong and demanding and he is arrogant and complacent), Electra strengthens and adds authority to Orestes (encourages him to fulfill the plot against Clytemnestra and Aegisthus). Electra merely provides information for Orestes while Clytemnestra is the brains behind her operation and does her own dirty work. These two women, one bore the other, became such different people. Clytemnestra had this thirst for power hurting any and every one in her way. Meanwhile Electra wanted justice for all who had been harmed by her mother’s selfish ways. Electra helped to accomplish the will of Apollo who took action through Orestes and her own agenda was finished by Orestes as he murdered Clytemnestra and Aegisthus to avenge Agamemnon’s unjust murder.Clytemnestra and Electra are opposite characters who are related but have no similarities. These two women accomplish their own agendas, each leading to their own individual success stories. Unfortunately for one death was imminent but her plan to reign as queen was fulfilled and she needed very little help along the way. The strength that comes from Clytemnestra is uncharacteristic of the times but showed the reader that even in times of timidity for women it was acceptable to a certain degree to be successful and that getting a man’s job done was something women were capable of doing. Electra’s reserved attitude and presence comes from a more accurate portrayal of the Greek Hellenic woman. She obeys her father and she respects and loves her family, most of all she is loyal to justice. These two characters are very different and represent very different eras of women, Clytemnestra a more feministic, outgoing, and care free woman; whereas Electra is quiet, dutiful, and outspoken. They have different views
When a person is accused of a crime they are either found innocent or guilty. This is the basic idea of justice and it is what many feel needs to happen if someone has done something controversial. In the play The Oresteia by Aeschylus, the story of Clytemnestra guilt or innocents is questioned. She does many things that people are not too happy with and those controversial actions throughout the story, mainly in the first part Agamemnon get her into the trouble. As we explore the case that builds against her innocents by exploring the killings of Agamemnon and Cassandra and the boastful expression about the killings.
on the life of Electra. In Sophocles's version, the play opens with Orestes learning his fate. from the Pythian Oracle; he must revenge his father's death unarmed and. alone. He sends his pedagogue Pylades, as a spy, to learn about the situation in Mycenae. Electra mourns for her father's death. She is Unable to avenge her father's murders without the help of Orestes, her brother. She is also mad about how her mother and her lover waste her father's riches and desecrate his name. Her half-sister Chrysothemis is. no help to Electra and refuses to help in the murder of her mother and mother's love of the world.
This paper aims to study two significant playwrights, Sophocles and Euripides, and compare their respective attitudes by examining their plays in respect to plot and character structures. To achieve this goal, the paper is organized into two main sections. In the first section, we provide a brief biography of both Sophocles and Euripides. The second and last section includes summaries of Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra which were based on same essentials and give an opportunity to observe the differences of the playwrights. This section also includes the comparisons that are made by our observations about the plays.
After Agamemnon’s death, Aegisthus is next in line to become king and Clytemnestra is his queen. Her desire for power is hidden by her claims of justification. She challenges anyone to take her power. “[H]e who conquers me in fair fight shall rule me” (45). She threatens the Chorus to a fight for power. She knows she has all the power now the king was dead and she is his queen. Clytemnestra is aware she killed him for his power, but her arrogance makes her put the deed on the curse of the House of Atreus and vengeance for
Comparing the Portrayal of Clytemnestra in Agamemnon and Electra In both Electra and Agamemnon, Euripides and Aeschylus have chosen to represent Clytemnestra as a complex character being neither all bad nor all good - the signature of a sophisticated playwright. In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra is a morbidly obsessive woman, utterly consumed by the murder of her daughter for which the audience cannot help but sympathise; she is capable only of vengeance. In the Electra, Clytemnestra is placed in an even more sympathetic light, victimised by her own daughter who in turn is driven by an obsessive desire, similar to that of her mother's, to avenge her father's death.