Oresteia Suffering Into The Truth Analysis

Justice in the Oresteia Justice is often taken for granted in the world we live in today with a judicial system that gives fair punishment for most crimes. In the Oresteia justice works much differently, where there are no judges or a court system to resolve disputes, instead there is revenge. Revenge is very messy because somebody will and has to get hurt first to desire revenge, and it leads to a cycle that cannot and will not end until everybody is dead. Justice does not and cannot only be revenge because in the end nobody would be left in that system. Aeschylus' Oresteia focuses on revenge as justice, with the old system that no longer works and that someone must fix, and a new system that has

Have you ever acted out in retribution for something done to you? Some examples could be if you punched someone for intentionally kicking you, or if someone deliberately hurt the feelings of someone you love and you retaliated in kind. You probably thought the punishment you received for your actions was too harsh or lenient. Many factors went into the decision of what discipline you received for this act and some were fair while others probably were not. This is true for the actions of many people in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. In each of the three plays, someone is seeking vengeance for a wrong done unto them, someone they know/love, or both. For this paper, I will be focusing on the vengeance enacted by Clytemnestra, Orestes, and the Fates. The vengeance that each person enacted was deemed just or unjust depending on many factors including the people who were doing the judging. Vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is viewed through the social lens of the society that it was enacted in. This lens is made up of the popular values, beliefs, and social conventions of the period as well as the judge’s personal views and/or experiences. These factors (such as gender and relation to the victim, as well as the presence or absence of transgressions on the characters part) lead to different opinions about the guilt of the accused individual and the individual themselves. The view of vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is very subjective.

In the Oresteia, revenge drives the characters to act. Although they call it justice, it is not. Aeschylus uses net imagery to symbolize faith and destiny. When Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon and Cassandra, the net imagery acts as a symbol of terrible fate. However, then fate reverse. Now, Orestes is caught in Apollo’s net and kills his own mother. Lastly, Athene changes the meaning of the net from one of chaos to that of order and justice. These uses of the net imagery help the reader focus on a crucial theme in the play: the superiority of a formal justice system to one based on the individual quest for revenge by progressively altering the nets meaning and its affect on those around it.

The chorus finds Aegisthus guilty of the treasonous act of killing the king and just hopes for Agamemnon’s son, Orestes to return and end this injustice.

Imagine a world where happiness is given to you. Happiness is not worked for nor earned, you just get it. Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, is a novel written in 1932, where Huxley predicts the future of humankind. At the time, Henry Ford was famous for the cheap mass production of the T-model cars using the assembly line. Thus, Huxley predicts a future in which people from the World State(the society he predicts the future will hold) are engineered in test tubes and conditioned to be one of the castes in their society. In this society, the characteristics and emotions that makes humans human are banned. Families, love, passion, literature, natural birth, religion and monogamy are banned because

Even though Agamemnon made a success for his homecoming, what was waiting for him was her wife’s conspiracy with Aegisthus and his death (262-263). Namely, his nosmos was rather a failure and he also faced fate of his failed household. This Agamemnon’s gives a comparison with Odysseus future success for preserving his family and throne. Furthermore, Clytemnestra’s unfaithfulness and infidelity provides a foil to Penelope’s faithfulness and loyalty. Clytemnestra’s merciless and brutal actions, not sealing Agamemnon’s eyes while he was dying, adds contrasting characteristics between Odysseus and Agamemnon’s wives. Note that here, the story of successful vengeance for Agamemnon by Orestes gives a foil to Telemachus’ weakness and deficiency. Orestes here is depicted as a heroic example with murder of Aegistus after he comes of age (264). On the contrary to Orestes who saved his household and restored order in his family’s kingdom, Telemachus, as he came of age, couldn’t serve as protecting his household and repel his mother’s suitors in the absence of his father. In the light of comparing each heroic figures’ sons, the son of Achilles is also depicted as successful warrior with great strength and fame in the battlefield against Trojan, adding a foil to Telemachus’ unsuccessful position as a son (266).

The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus (Oresteia, 2017). The Libation Bearers is the second play in the trilogy of tragedies. In the Libation Bearers, Orestes is the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. After many years of exile, Orestes returned home to Argos in secret to mourn the death of his father and to seek revenge for Agamemnon’s death to his murderers. The House of Atreus has a generation curse of bloodshed on the men in the family that seems as if it cannot be broken, causing the men in the family to kill or sacrifice their own child or family members. Apollo has also threatened to punish Orestes with further exile and more horrible consequences if he disobeys the god quest. But throughout the play, we will learn how one must come to reconcile with their fate. The chorus said that “blood, once spilt, does not seep easily into the earth. It "clots hard" and refuses to disappear.”

blood [and] cut off the race just dashing into life!" (107) He is a bloody

And jurors all in silence recognize this court / Which I ordain today in Perpetuity / That now and always justice may be well discerned" (571-574). This quote exemplifies the importance of justice in society. It displays how justice must always be recognized in a matter of life or death. Within the trial, Orestes says that it was Apollo's oracle that commanded him to kill his mother. Ultimately, justice prevails, for Orestes is acquitted. One can conclude that it would not be just to punish Orestes because he was advised by Apollo to kill his mother.

Unfortunately, the same fate awaits him if he commits matricide, thereby avenging his father. Orestes chooses the latter and is besieged by 'the hounds of mother's hate.' (Lib: 1055-6). Through this sequence of murderous events, Aeschylus demonstrates the complexity and futility of the blood feud as a system of justice. There are no winners, and the cycle of violence does not end. Thus, this cycle of vengeance is not justice.

She sends him off to be killed, thinking that she had stopped the prophecy from happening, she worries no more. Iocaste does not know the whole truth though. She does not know that the shepherd had actually disobeyed her. The shepherd whom she gave the baby to disobeyed her, and didn't kill the child. Instead, in pity, he sent the baby away far enough that he thought the foretelling would not be in effect. Again this did not stop fate. Once Oedipus found out that the people he had known, as his parents were not his blood relatives, Iocaste found out what had actually happened. "For God's love, let us have no more questioning! /Is your life nothing to you? /My own is pain enough for me to bear" (Sophocles 55). These were a few of her last words. Fate took her life.

The king's household and family are greatly affected by the religion in that there lack of believe in the gods has caused devastation within there lives. Iokaste, both Oedipus's queen and mother, is a strong believer in the oracle. She does not want to believe that Oedipus is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Her believe in the idea that man can change his fate is challenged as she discovers that Oedipus is truly her son and he in fact killed his father 9 (i.e. her first husband). She is punished by the gods for being a disbeliever. Her punishment of becoming a disbeliever comes in the form of committing the sin of incest, which brings her form the top of the chain of being to the very bottom. The unbearable thought drives her to kill herself and leave her daughters motherless. The overall

Agamemnon was particularly cursed, although he was the victor at Troy. The reason for this curse is that Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and Agamemnon's earthly father Atreus were in the habit of "eating" and "sacrificing" their own children to appease the gods. But the imagery created by Aeschylus of these acts of sacrifice is also that of incestuous acts and their consequences. Aeschylus writes in Agamemnon, "Look! See them sit, there on the wall, like forms in dreams, / Children butchered like lambs by their own kindred." [1219-1220] The reason that Aeschylus portrays the children as sitting is because Agamemnon was sitting at the meal in which Atreus served up the flesh of his son for

The play termed the Oresteia is actually a trilogy that is built around the family of Agamemnon. Traditionally, one of the primary themes of the three plays is a movement from a traditional belief in revenge for wrongs to one of justice and the rule of law. The purpose of this paper is to discuss all three of the plays and look at how justice is conceived in each.

No blame is placed upon him by the people and they believe he "slipped his neck in the strap of fate" 217, only after which did his spirit become "black, impure, unholy" 218. The people of Mycenae, typically represented by the elders, and thus the Chorus have absolved him of blame in their minds. All their words about the leader are nothing but in praise of their king. They are nearly "faint with longing" for the return of their king, though we can also partly attribute this to a desire to be rid of Clytemnestra more than their wish to return to the rule of Agamemnon. They indeed emphasise the tyranny of the Queen ("she commands, full of her high hopes...manoeuvres like a man" 13). The sentry echoes the love for the King though ("My king, I'll take your loving hand in mine" 37), and the herald is similarly well disposed toward him, and he hasn't been under the yoke of Clytemnestra ("he brings us light in the darkness...Agamemnon lord of men"). The people absolve the King of blame over Iphigenia, and give him unconditional loyalty, but Clytemnestra rests it all upon his shoulders ("girl of tears...here you are repaid" 1554). She understands the grandeur of her action and the scale of it but believes that "what we did was destiny" 1692. Though, it is my belief that the honourable King of Mycenae was commanded by the fates to kill his daughter, and it was by no means his will to carry