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Greek Tragedy Aeschylus' Oresteia |
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Just one of the many treasures of the world of early Greek tragedy was
Aeschylus' Oresteia. Aeschylus’ Oresteia, first played in Athens’ City Dionysia along with a lost Satyr-play (Proteus), was unusual among contemporary pieces for its level of continuity. The other trilogy extant, Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, doesn’t show the same close connection between plays evident in the Oresteia. The connection between the plays is suggestive of more modern theater, and even modern film trilogies, well known to the reader. Oresteia and the Theban plays Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, useful for comparison with the Oresteia, shows many significant differences in the arrangement of the plays, and the level of interconnectedness. While the Oresteia can be seen as tracing a single story arc, the Theban plays are much more like three separate stories, each with its own set of conflicts and themes. The main theme of the Oresteia can be seen as the transition from a system of vigilante justice, to the sort of civic justice enjoyed by the Athenian people who first saw the play. In Agamemnon we see Clytemnestra take it upon herself to punish not only her husband, but also Cassandra. This after she had been having an affair with Aegisthus while Agamemnon was at Troy. She says: I don’t care if you praise me or blame me, it makes no difference to me. Here lies Agamemnon, my husband, dead, the work of this right hand a just craftsman. And that is the end of that. (Agamemnon, lines 1402-1406) Her belief in the rightness of her actions displays the first act of vigilante justice. The same theme can be seen to arc into the proceeding plays, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides. In The Libation Bearers, while Orestes is busy killing his mother, the chorus sings: Raise the hallowed cal for our master’s house! It has escaped the evil, it has been cleansed of the two defilers, who wore the wealth away. … We call her Justice, rightly named, breathing destruction, hatred and rage. (The Libation Bearers, lines 942-951) Again we see vigilantism being seen as justice. While an Athenian citizen may balk at the use of vigilantism as the only form of justice, the chorus is perfectly accepting of it, finding only positivism, singing “the future looks bright to behold.” When Orestes is acquitted of the charge of murder, forcing the Furies to stop, we finally have the success of the polis against the forces of vengeance. The furies were seeking a form of vengeance against Orestes for his actions, but instead are put in a position of weakness when compared to the people. Evidence of this can be seen in the words of Athena: I swear by Justice that you will receive your due respect. I will give you a shrine of the earth in this righteous land and seat you on gleaming thrones beside an altar, where my citizens will worship you with honor. (The Eumenides, lines 804-807) This represents the defeat of vigilante justice at the hands of the polis. By being incorporated into the city in the form of a shrine, the reader can infer that they have become essentially powerless. As the furies say, “Honors gone, stripped away, the cheating gods have left us with nothing!” Compare this unified overall theme with the individual themes of the Theban plays. In Antigone the primary theme seems to be that of the individual’s role in the state and the proper behavior of a ruler. To demonstrate this, Kreon tells Haimon: So spit that girl away just like an enemy, and let her marry someone else, in Hades’ house. For I have caught her disobeying openly, this girl alone of all the city… (Antigone, 653-656) Antigone’s disregard for Kreon’s edict, which Tiresias tells him is a “violation of the gods,” is seen as bad by Kreon not only because he believes the body should be kept unburied by rights, but because she is disobeying her rightful king. Even after he has changed his mind about his conduct and agrees to free Antigone, Kreon still holds, “It is best, I fear, to live until life’s end preserving the established laws.” This doesn’t seem to be a striking change of heart. There is a certain feeling of inevitability in Oedipus the King. The question of how much control one has over one’s own life seems to figure strongly in the play. This contrasts very strongly with the theme of Antigone, in which it was much more clear that Antigone herself was acting with complete free will, and without the compulsion of prophecy. Although the question does arise in Antigone in the prophecy of Tiresias, in Oedipus the King the entire story is centered around an initial foretelling of doom, and the drama continues to revolve around prophecy. In a way, Antigone is a tragedy of human action, while Oedipus the King is a tragedy of divine predestination. May fortune favor you! May some divinity chance to protect you better than myself, for this, their road to me. Where are you children? Come to me! (Oedipus the King, 1478-1480) Here we see the acknowledgment of his cruel fate as just that. The themes of Oedipus at Colonus again shows significant difference and disconnectedness with the other two plays. Antigone says, “You see, then, how you’re making this man’s prophecies come out right…” This shows that there isn’t the same obvious strength of prophecy in Oedipus at Colonus that there is in Oedipus the King. Instead of lamenting that the prophecy will certainly come true, Antigone merely bemoans that he might make it true, as she continues to persuade Polyneices to turn from his ways. Another interesting aspect of Oedipus at Colonus is the end of one’s life. Unlike every other character in the Theban plays, Oedipus is able to enjoy a peaceful death at an advanced age. Ironically, one can still make the case that despite the significant difference between his death and the deaths of Antigone, Jokasta, and the others, he still commits suicide like them. The idea of being ready for death to come, and accepting it, plays strongly here. To be perfectly clear, the reason that the Oresteia seems to be so much more unified is because it was indeed played as a unified trilogy in the same year. Sophocles’ plays were each part of separate tetralogies, and so did not need share any thematic elements at all. The fact that any overlap exists is somewhat remarkable. Oedipus at Colonus looks back on the events of Oedipus the King, and at the same time looks forward toward Antigone, but both luxuries are due to its date of publication, near the end of Sophocles’ life. One more superficial comparison between the two sets is the number of characters shared between the individual plays. While Orestes appears in only two episodes in the series, Clytemnestra or her ghost appears in all three. The only character to appear in each Theban play is Kreon. Kreon’s personality seems to change throughout the saga, however, while Clytemnestra is always seen as the antagonist, even if a somewhat sympathetic one in Agamemnon. Like Orestes, Oedipus only appears in two of “his own” plays. The reasons for this are very different for the two characters, however. Orestes is a somewhat stable character, whose actions in The Eumenides match the actions from the The Libation Bearers quite clearly, as no time passes between these two plays. Oedipus, on the other hand, is seen some decades after the events of Oedipus the King, and so has understandably changed as a person. His actions are much more humble, more fitting for someone in his position. This evolution of character helps to disconnect one play from the other, separating them even more than temporally. One aspect of the Oresteia that makes it seem as a much more connected whole, is the clear-cut ending. Unlike the Theban plays, which seem to have two very clear endings, once with the death of Oedipus and once with the death of Antigone, while Oedipus the King’s ending isn’t quite so final, Aeschylus’ Oresteia has a very clear, well-defined ending, which completely wraps up the action of the trilogy. Each play can be taken on it’s own, but the conflict isn’t truly resolved until the end of The Eumenides. Oresteia and modern film The comparison between Aeschylus’ Oresteia and modern film, while not totally natural, seems to make a lot of sense on first thought. This is perhaps because we are so used to seeing many famous trilogies in the modern era, such as Star Wars, The Matrix or The Godfather. We can easily see in the Oresteia many similarities with these more modern works, but probably more important differences. Some similarities between The Godfather trilogy and the Oresteia have been more fully explored in a paper titled “Ideology, rhetoric, and blood-ties: from 'The Oresteia' to 'The Godfather,'” by John Krapp. While much of the content of that article isn’t pertinent to the discussion at hand, one excerpt is particularly interesting: In each of these dramas, the tension hinges on a dilemma in which the respective protagonists are forced to negotiate a nearly identical conflict that appears both inescapable and impossibly contradictory. Of Orestes's dilemma, Hugh Lloyd-Jones writes: "If he...fail[s] to avenge his father, the Erinyes would have [to pursue] him for his failure; since he does avenge him, they pursue him for the killing of his mother" (91). In Coppola's trilogy, when Michael Corleone learns that his brother, Fredo, has cooperated with Michael's enemies, he orders Fredo's murder to protect the Corleone family… The most important thing to notice is that the same dilemma that Aeschylus first wrote about thousands of years ago are still the dilemmas that are interesting to humans to this very day, and even the model of explication has retained several key features. To find similarities between the Oresteia and something much less realistic, say Lord of the Rings, or Back to the Future, is probably somewhat more tortured, but still we see the same motifs pop up. In the Oresteia, Orestes is on a quest to attain vengeance against his mother for the death of his father. In George Lucas’ popular Star Wars trilogy, a primary goal of the protagonist, Luke Skywalker, is gaining revenge for the death of his father. When he later learns that Darth Vader, the ominous antagonist, is in fact his father, he finds that he is still obligated to destroy him, and intends to fight him in a final showdown. The parallel between killing your mother for her evil acts and killing your father for his evil acts is obvious. Unfortunately, the similarities quickly end. Star Wars is much more of a coming of age story and much less about the acceptance of societal justice over personal revenge. When the Oresteia was written, it was with much more ambiguity than Star Wars. Greek myth so often seems accepting of ambiguities, and exploring the fringes of human nature, while American pop theater so often relegates itself to the extremely safe worlds of moral absolutism. The mindset of the classical Greek seems to be very different from that of the modern American. Their beliefs regarding Gods and free will, as well as the very “newness” of civilization means that many of the things they talk about seem very strange to the modern reader, such as xenia or even the furies. At the same time, many of the topics explored are constants of human nature. It is perhaps for this reason that the Theban plays are more widely read, though the Oresteia is more interesting to read as a story, with a clearly defined story line that spans all three plays. Sophocles’ trilogy examines parts of the human experience that are more fundamental, like the nature of free will, acceptance of death, and the relationship between citizen and democracy. This page
copyright Setareh, 2006
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