Dionysus and the Unraveling of Ideologies in The Bacchae
Some evaluations claim that the Dionysus appearing in The Bacchae is fairly true embodiment of the ideals of ancient Athens. He demands only worship and proper reverence for his name, two matters of honor that pervaded both the Greek tragedies and the pious society that viewed them. In other plays, Oedipus' consultations with Apollo and the many Choral appeals to Zeus reveal the Athenian respect for their gods, while Electra's need for revenge and Antigone's obligation to bury Polyneices both epitomize the themes of respect and dignity. Yet although Dionysus personifies these two motifs, his clashes with the rest of Athenian tradition seem to make him its true adversary. Dionysius distinctly opposes the usual views on gender, age, rationality and divinity, leaving the reader to wonder whether these contrasts were Euripidean attempts to illuminate specific facets of the culture itself.
Examination of Dionysus's challenges should begin with The Bacchae's most obvious perversion of custom, the question of gender. As Dionysus indicates early in the play, the enraptured band of Bacchant followers is comprised only of females: "Every woman in Thebes-but the women only- / I drove from home" (35-36). Though Cadmus further illuminates the matter by raising the question, "Are we the only men / who will dance for Bacchus?" (195-196), the text offers no definitive explanation for why Dionysus calls solely upon the women. A superficial reading might suggest that Euripides attempted to portray the stereotypical "weaker sex" as the one "more susceptible to invasive passions than men, especially eros and daemonic possession," but more is probably at stake.
As Edith Hall ...
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...ty since "things could happen in the real life of Athens which were virtually unthinkable in tragedy, and vice versa." Perhaps the safest assessment of Dionysus is that while not a direct opponent of the traditional ways, his presence, and especially his effect on other characters, serves to highlight many social norms. According to Bernad Knox, "From start to finish, Euripides was 'attempting to show citizens bred in the traditional views...that such conceptions of the gods should offend them.'" Perhaps we as readers will never fully understand the Dionysus that appears in this play, but a closing look at a remark of the Chorus may bring us a step closer to this understanding:
--What is wisdom? What gift of the gods
is held in honor like this:
to hold your hand victorious
over the heads of those you hate?
Honor is precious forever. (877-881)
Ulysses Mcgill has to deal with many different and serious conflicts, both internally and externally.First, Ulysses must decide if he should pull over the car to hear the Sirens, even though he is already on the run and the police must be close. Second, Ulysses’ conflict with society is that, as a married husband on the run from the law, women, no matter how beautiful their voices may be, should not be on his mind. Lastly, Ulysses loses his compadre, Pete, has disappeared without a trace, leaving only a toad and his clothes in his wake. His conflicts within himself are not only affecting him within his own mind, but his behavior toward others are changed as well.
practice amongst the men, which is nudity. The sculptor depicted Dionysos with a slightly S-shaped body
Euripdies' The Bacchae is known for its celebration of women's rebellion and patriarchial overthrow, claims which hold truth if not supremely. The Thebans, along with other women, pursue the rituals and culture of Dionysus’s cult which enacts their rebellion against men and the laws of their community. However, this motion to go aginst feminine norms is short lived as they lose power. When Agave comes to her epiphany, Dionysus is the one who is triumphant over Pentheus's death, not Agave or her sisters These women must be punished for their rebellion against both men and community. This female power is weakened and the rebellion muted in order to bring back social order and also to provide the story with a close. Female rebellion actually becomes oppressed through The Bacchae due to its conseqences and leading events of the play. This alludes to the message that women who do not follow traditional roles of femininity are subject to the destruction of an established society.
Symposium is set during a festival for Dionysus, the goddess of fertility; this setting emphasizes the sexual expectations of society that Alcibiades must confront. During fertility festivals, "the Athenians would carry phalluses around the city in ribald celebration" (Rudall 5);1 the phallus in Athens was a symbol of both fertility and eroticism. The Athenians, concerned with the potential extinction of the human race, performed rituals during these festivals that celebrated the phallus as the means of the reproduction of human life. Thus, heterosexual relationships were justified by the creation of children, and the focus of the celebration of the phallus was its productive nature. This focus on productivity created a social expectation that sexual relationships should be productive.
...o all guests saved Odysseus and helped him return home to his wife, son, and kingdom. Even though people from many different kingdoms and islands took Odysseus in their home and showed him great kindness on his return home, the individual who helped him most was the goddess Athena. In many occasions Athena assisted Odysseus. One such example is when Odysseus was fighting of the suitors and they threw spears at him. "Re-forming, the suitors threw again with all their strength, but Athena turned their shots, or all but two (p 566)." Another instance which Athena aided Odysseus was when she disguised him as a beggar on his arrival to his homeland. "Would even you have guessed that I am Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus, I that am always with you in times of trial, a shield to you in battle (p 444)." "Your goddess-guardian to the end in all your trials (p 539)."
The Bacchae indicates that Dionysus is not concerned with morality since his way of controlling people and seeking revenge is viewed as corrupt. Dionysus is a god born of a mortal mother, therefore the people of Thebes deny he’s a god. He sought revenge against those who denied him as a god by murdering and driving them insane. Pentheus denied his status as a god and failed to honor him as such. Dionysus got revenge by forcing Pentheus’s mother to kill his own son. The women of Thebes denied his status as a god, therefore, he drove them insane. The way the women worshipped Dionysus is viewed as immoral and cruel since they are controlled without their own will. Dionysus is the god of wine; wine represents celebration and festivities. Although wine can help people relieve their worries, it can cause them to experience drunkenness. Once someone is drunk they can be destructive and lose control of their thoughts and judgment. Once they are controlled by Dionysus they do not always know the difference between what is
Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ The Bacchae are indubitably plays of antitheses and conflicts, and this condition is personified in the manifestation of their characters, each completely opposed to the other. Both tragedians reveal tensions between two permanent and irreconcilable moral codes; divine law represented by Antigone and Dionysus and human law represented by Creon and Pentheus. The central purpose is evidently the association of law which has its consent in political authority and the law which has its consent in the private conscience, the association of obligations imposed on human beings as citizens and members of state, and the obligations imposed on them in the home as members of families. Both these laws presenting themselves in their most crucial form are in direct collision. Sophocles and Euripides include a great deal of controversial material, once the reader realizes the inquiries behind their work. Inquiries that pertain to the very fabric of life, that still make up the garments of society today.
In Euripides’ play The Bacchae, the ideals that were the foundation of Greek culture were called into question. Until early 400B.C.E. Athens was a society founded upon rational thinking, individuals acting for the good of the populace, and the “ideal” society. This is what scholars commonly refer to as the Hellenic age of Greek culture. As Athens is besieged by Sparta, however, the citizens find themselves questioning the ideals that they had previously lived their lives by. Euripides’ play The Bacchae shows the underlying shift in ideology of the Greek people from Hellenic (or classical), to Hellenistic; the god character Dionysus will be the example that points to the shifting Greek ideology.
Ulysses, in The Odyssey, is the hero who has been trying to get home to his love, Penelope, and also his beloved country. He has found himself at war with many different gods and people, including Neptune, who is not yet ...
Many different interpretations can be derived from themes in Euripides's The Bacchae, most of which assume that, in order to punish the women of Thebes for their impudence, the god Dionysus drove them mad. However, there is evidence to believe that another factor played into this confrontation. Because of the trend of male dominance in Greek society, women suffered in oppression and bore a social stigma which led to their own vulnerability in becoming Dionysus's target. In essence, the Thebian women practically fostered Dionysian insanity through their longing to rebel against social norms. Their debilitating conditions as women prompted them to search for a way to transfigure themselves with male qualities in order to abandon their social subordination.
The first type of madness is that of “[an] seer’s inspiration coming from Apollo” (265b), for whom like “the prophetess at Delphi, no less, and the priestess at Dodona,” are able to guide the cities, like Sibyl, through divine prophecies “[onto] the right track in respect to the future” (244a-b). The second type of divine madness, [the] mystical initiation ascribed to Dionysus,” symbolizes wisdom and retribution, or justice. Plato further emphasizes wisdom and justice in his play Bacchae, in which he represents Dionysus as the personification of retribution, or justice, in, juxtapose to Pentheus, whom personifies traditions. Pentheus, due to his lack of wisdom, failed to not only see the divinity of Dionysus, and distinguish between what is reality and illusionary, but his death also symbolized the act of justice for underrepresented citizens, particularly for women that held no political power or representation in the state. The third classification of divine madness, “a poetic madness coming from the Muses,” depicts how madness can inspire the people it processes by educating them on “[the glorifications of the] myriad deeds of those in the past” (245a). Once processed with madness, Socrates emphasized how their works often eclipse the poetry of the sane, underlining how the poetry of the sane
The Chi Omega Greek Theater was constructed as a gift to the University commemorating Chi
Amir and Ulysses both ultimately attempt to return to their home and reach a goal. In Amir’s case he had to return to his childhood country to retrieve his half brother’s son and in Ulysses’s case he needed to return home after being out at sea for twenty years. The two held family values and had people at home who loved them greatly. Amir owed it to Hassan and Ulysses needed to return to his faithful wife and son in Ithaca. In a sense they both took on these dangerous journeys and endured them for their family—“For you, a thousand times over” (Hosseini
Tennyson, Alfred. "Ulysses." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 7th ed.
'Ulysses' is both a lament and an inspiring poem. Even modern readers who are not so familiar with the classics, can visualize the heroic legend of Ulysses, and so is not prepared for what he finds in the poem— not Ulysses the hero but Ulysses the man.