Savagery In Euripides The Bacchae

Throughout The Bacchae, Euripides uses the Greek myth of Dionysus’s revenge on Pentheus, the king of Thebes, and his mother, Agave, to compare the complex worlds of nature versus man. From the entrance of the royal palace of Thebes there are two paths, the first of which leads east to the wilderness of Cithaeron, while the other leads west to the ancient city of Thebes. Is it possible that these two locations are merely the random setting of this Greek Tragedy, or are they meant to give deeper insight into the delicate balance between rationality and savagery in human society? The answer is clearly the latter. The opposing ideas that these locations represent, along with Euripides’s use of conflict, juxtaposition, extended metaphor, irony, and imagery, help to fully convey one of the overall messages of his work: not only will there always be a place for the irrational within an ordered society, but it is necessary in order for a healthy society or mind to thrive. For the duration of the play, Euripides utilizes dichotomies

The untamed frenzy of the wilderness of Cithaeron is a personification of Dionysus, while the man made city of Thebes can be understood as Pentheus. The climax of the play occurs, as Pentheus is dismembered by his own mother after trying to spy on the Maenads in a final attempt to control the uncontrollable. Pentheus is challenging the human desire for Dionysian experience by bringing the ideals of the city into the wilderness. By choosing to the express the character foil between Dionysus and Pentheus as the clashing between the wilderness and civilization, especially in that scene, Euripides expresses that human society cannot survive solely based on reason and that those who try to suppress the unordered and emotional aspects of human nature, will in turn become the destructive force they were trying to