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Breaking Bad: A Modern Adaptation Of Aeschylus Oresteia

Better Essays

John Gatti
Professor Donald Sells
Great Books 191
4 December 2014
Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad: A Modern Adaptation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia Throughout Vince Gilligan’s television series Breaking Bad, the show’s principal character, Walter White, experiences a tragic series of life events that parallels that of Agamemnon in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Adapting this ancient Greek tragedy forces Gilligan to create a set of conditions that make this storyline more accessible for a modern audience. By choosing contemporarily relevant, yet abhorrent themes to draw these parallels, Gilligan makes this loose adaptation of The Oresteia engaging for a modern audience. By including vivid details outlining Walter White’s unyielding greed and unsavory home life …show more content…

According to Solon’s theory of excess wealth, excess wealth leads to koros—an inability to achieve satisfaction. This, in turn, leads to hubris—a crime of humiliating others. When Agamemnon returns home to Argos from Troy, he arrives with numerous riches that he earned fighting the Trojan War. Affirming Solon’s theory, Agamemnon is no happy with monetary wealth alone, as he seeks intangible power in his personal life as well. His koros influences him to assert his dominance over his wife, Clytemnestra, by silencing her. (Agamemnon: 913-915) Because of Agamemnon’s inability to be satisfied by his existing wealth, he decides to walk on a tapestry that Clytemnestra lays out in front of him. (Agamemnon: 944-957) This act is a terrible mistake, as the tapestry represents great wealth, a symbol of Agamemnon’s high socioeconomic status. By walking on it, and thus ruining the tapestry, Agamemnon commits a great crime out of greed that shows his ignorance of socioeconomic disparities in an ancient Greek society where most people could not dream of possessing such a treasure. Agamemnon commits this transgression because the tapestry’s value seems miniscule in comparison to his accumulated wealth. Because of his ceaseless drive to assert his …show more content…

Lyons, Melissa Bernstein, Karen Moore,
Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, R J. Mitte, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt, Raymond Cruz, Tess Harper, Steven M. Quezada, Krysten Ritter, Giancarlo Esposito, Lancie J. De, Michael Slovis, Dave Porter, and Lynne Willingham. Breaking Bad: The Complete Second Season. United States: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2010.

Gilligan, Vince, Thomas Schnauz, Peter Gould, George Mastras, Melissa Bernstein,
Stewart A. Lyons, Dave Porter, Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, R J. Mitte, Aaron Paul, Betsy Brandt, Dean Norris, Giancarlo Esposito, Jonathan Banks, Bob Odenkirk, and Steven M. Quezada. Breaking Bad: The Complete Third Season. Culver City, Calif: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2011.

Gilligan, Vince, Bryan Cranston, Diane Mercer, Moira Walley-Beckett, Stewart A.
Lyons, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt, R J. Mitte, Bob Odenkirk, Giancarlo Esposito, Jonathan Banks, Michael Slovis, Nelson Cragg, Dave Porter, Kelley Dixon, and Skip MacDonald. Breaking Bad: The Complete Fourth Season. Culver City, Calif: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2012.

Gilligan, Vince, Stewart A. Lyons, Diane Mercer, Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn,

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