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Parents in greek myths
Parents in greek myths
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The conflict between the rational and the irrational is present in every person or situation. In Greek tragedies, this conflict is constantly present within the characters’ actions and decisions. Usually, there is always one character that will act rationally compared to the others and would try to fix the conflict. Both The Eumenides and The Bacchae depict the conflict between the rational and the irrational, yet the act and solution are presented differently. Whereas The Eumenides portrays it through killing the family by committing matricide and homicide, The Bacchae portrays it through killing the family by committing unconscious homicide driven by the desire of the forbidden.
The most powerful characters in The Eumenides, starting with the Furies, everything about them has a meaning. The Furies think of Orestes as an awful person, and are determined to capture Orestes for committing matricide. They do not symbolize peace, but revenge; they represent the application of the law without any further understanding. The Furies demonstrate this at the end of the play, in which they conform with a gift from Athena in order to stop arguing of what the solution turned out to be. Apollo is another important character who symbolizes revenge as well as order. By commanding Orestes to kill his mother or suffer the consequences, Apollo symbolizes the desire for revenge and order of rights. He believes that avenging the death of the king (Orestes’ father) and placing Orestes as the lawful heir to the throne is the right thing to do. As it has tradition to hand down the throne to the son rather than the wife when a king passes, Apollo wants to impose that order. He does not let Clytaemestra rule, for a queen who murders her husband and sends...
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...th Semele, leading to Dionysus’s desire for revenge that resembles Clytaemestra’s motives. He wants his mother’s family to pay off their debts, making women get so drunk unconsciously and later tricking Pentheus to go see the forbidden. In this tragedy Euripides aspires to demonstrate how even desiring to see the forbidden can deceive the most rational man. Both the rational and irrational plays a part in every person’s decision; it is how one decides to act upon a situation and demonstrate towards which side he or she tends to favor. Whether it is like Pentheus, a rational man deceived by his “inner Dionysus” commits an irrational act that took his life away, or like Athena, who introduces a neutral trial that rationally decides the consequences and gravity of the conflict when everyone that when a conflict arises and neither side sees eye to eye, there should be.
“Euripides Bacchae”. 29 Oct. 2015. Lecture). First I will demonstrate how the empowerment of the Bacchants is seen as a threat to the rational male civilization, but becomes more desirable as the play progresses. Secondly, I will show how the seemingly beneficial powers gained through female empowerment are revealed to be destructive and violent. Finally, I will illustrate how both the civilized rational male and wild irrational female symbolically fail at the plays end, whereas the balance between male and female is triumphant.
Euripides was born in Athens, Greece, around 485 B.C, with parents Cleito and Mnesarchus. He married a woman named Melito and had three sons. Euripides was raised in an ambience of culture, he was witnessed to the rebuilding of the Athenian walls after the Persian Wars, but above all belonged to the period of the Peloponnesian War. Over his career, he has written about 90 plays, but only 19 have survived through manuscripts. Euripides has been named as the most intellectual poet of his time. He has been called the philosopher of the theater. In addition to his literary expertise, he is said to have been a great athlete and painter. Like all the major playwrights of his time, Euripides participated in the annual Athenian dramatic festivals held in honor of the god Dionysus. He first entered the festival in 455, and he
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.
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.
Kreon, with his enlightening realization and uncontrollable mishaps, possesses qualities that better represent a tragic figure. He also corresponds to more aspects of Aristotle’s tragic hero model than Antigone does: Kreon is of noble beginnings, is fated by the gods to suffering, faces misfortune from an error judgment or personality flaw, is pitied by the audience, is enlightened or changed, and becomes a vessel for the audience’s catharsis. In the end, tragedies are essentially plays in honor of Dionysus. Through Kreon’s experiences in the play, the audience is reminded of their place in relation to the gods. Just as with every other aspect of Greek culture, religion plays a fundamental role in dictating the Greeks’ interpretation and
Euripides is a keen witness to the human character and the father of the psychological theater. His plays were modern at the time compared to others because of the way he focused on the personal lives and motives of his characters, in a manner that was unfamiliar to Greek audiences. His plays have often been seen, in simple terms, bad because critics have been unable to comprehend his visions. The ideas and concepts that Euripides developed were not accepted until after his death.
Throughout the play, the audience cannot help but feel merciless towards Pentheus. In his opening scene, Pentheus does not heed the warnings bestowed upon him by Teiresias and Cadmus. Before Pentheus even meets Dionysus, Teiresias offers him wise advice:
The character of Orestes is somewhat down-played in The Eumenides and in fact his role is far less significant than that of Apollo. Our first sight of Orestes sees him in a contradictory stance at Delphi, "Orestes holds a suppliant's branch in one hand, wreathed with a shining, pious tuft of wool, but in the other hand a bloody sword - bloody from his mother's wounds or from Apollo's purges, or both, since purging contaminates the purger and Apollo's shrine is polluted either way." (Fagles, R., The Serpent and the Eagle, p. 73, Penguin Classics, 1977.) Orestes admits his guilt (with no small amount of rationalization) but also attempts to place the bulk of the blame on Apollo, "And Apollo shares the guilt - he spurred me on, he warned of the pains I'd feel unless I acted, brought the guilty down." (Aeschylus, The Eumenides, Robert Fagles Trans., lines 479 - 481, Penguin Classics, 1977.) Apollo is representative of the new gods and, more particularly, of Zeus. "In the rapid succession of scenes at Delphi the representatives of the male and female divine forces appear before our eyes in bitter enmity with each other. And, they are indeed only representatives. Apollo speaks with the voice of Zeus... and hence of the Olympian patriarchy..." (Harington, J.,...
Orestes’ revenge is the first important example of the gods’ revenge in the poem. In Book 1, Hermes told Aegisthus, “’Don’t murder the man,’ he said, ‘don’t court his wife. Beware, revenge will come from Orestes…” (Homer 260). King Nestor delivers the story of Orestes’ revenge to Odysseus’ son Telemachus, while Telemachus is visiting Nestor to discover answers about his fathers’ whereabouts. In Book 3 of The Odyssey, King Nestor tells this of Agamemnon, “…Aegisthus hatched the kings’ horrendous death” (Homer, 285). King Nestor continues on telling of the revenge Agamemnon’s son Orestes has on Aegisthus, “Orestes took revenge, he killed that cunning, murderous Aegisthus…”(Homer, 285). This example of Orestes’ revenge shows that the gods should be listened to or they will give horrific revenges to those who disobey.
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.
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.
As a ruler of the state one must be viewed as masculine and in control, however there are many examples in Euripides writing that leads one to believe deep inside he is not who he claims to be. One way in which this is evident during the play is that Pentheus is constantly negating his own viewpoints on masculinity and his outlook of women outwardly. However there are many actions he might not openly say that may lead one to believe he is confused about his gender identity. In the beginning of the play Pentheus criticizes the feminine appearance of Cadmus and Dionysus, however he finds himself dressed as a women and enjoyed it. Pentheus initially has a deep hatred for the women who abandoned their homes for the mountains to commit what he thinks are vile sex acts. Yet as the play progresses he becomes extremely curious about what the women on the mountainside are doing under Dionysus’ order and when the opportunity presents itself to spy on the women he is ecstatic. Pentheus makes it seem as if he needs to witness these women, not for the sake of the state, but for his personal voyeurism. His obsession with the women’s hidden behavior may reflect not sexual interest, but a desire to know more comprehensively a group with which he identifies himself as, but the social norms in society have restricted him from expressing. Between his
The story that is found in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro proposes a dilemma that has since been a very controversial subject. When Socrates encounters Euthyphyo, he is on his way to trail to face charges against his own father. His father had been accused o...
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.
Euripides’ The Bacchae is a play about the cult of Dionysus, and more specifically about what happened to the city of Thebes after the king, Pentheus, prohibited the worship of Dionysus. The play begins with a lengthy monologue from Dionysus, in which he describes his birth, and journey throughout the East. As the first character to appear in the play, he also explains the reasons why future events will take place. He describes the actions of his mother’s sisters, his aunts, and the actions of the king, Pentheus. Dionysus is a vengeful god, and the message that this play sends to the audience is that “When insulted, gods do not forgive” (line 1818).