Phaedra's Declaration of Love to Hippolytus

The female characters portrayed in Aeschylus and Sophocles’ works have considerably different personalities and roles, yet those females all have the common weaknesses of being short-sighted and stubborn. They intensify the conflicts within their families while being inconsiderate of the impacts that they may bring to their nations and societies, which leads to consequences that they are incapable of taking responsibilities for. Clytemnestra and Antigone, two major characters in their respective author’s works, possess different motivations for their deeds in the stories. While Clytemnestra is driven by the desire of revenge to murder her husband Agamemnon, Antigone acts against Creon’s will and strives to properly bury her brother. Despite having different motivations and personalities, Clytemnestra and Antigone both commit

Antigone, a classic Greek tragedy written by Sophocles, showcases a variety of strong emotions throughout its tumultuous events. From the beginning of the play with the deaths of Eteokles and Polyneikes to Creon’s last lines, emotions such as anger, sadness and grief wrack the characters. Even before the timeline of the play begins, Antigone’s mother and father have both committed suicide. By the end of the work five named characters have died, their passings lying heavy in the hearts of survivors. As such, it is rather obvious that the characters’ grief acts as the force that drives the plot of the play forward. Antigone demonstrates to the audience that excessive grief, although essential in healthily processing tragic events and helpful

The relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta represents ideal, mature love, and contrasts with the other lovers’ relationships with in the play. Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazon, is engaged to Theseus, Athenian duke. Occasionally, they disagree about certain issues, but due to their mature personalities, they are able to confront and resolve their problems. They understand the terms of their relationship, and they know where they stand. Hippolyta is the former leader of the Amazons- a tribe of fierce warrior women whose only connection with men came when it was time to kill or time breed. She is therefore unmoved by Theseus “wooing” her. Their relationship matures throughout the course of the play. At the end of Act 4, as the sun rises,

In the play Antigone, by Sophocle, the protagonist Creon discovers that his niece goes against his proclamation and buries her brother, Polyneices. Told in third person point of view, the author describes the setting of family cursed with ill fortune, establishing the central conflict of Antigone disobeying the king. This affects the work as a whole because Sophocles’ purpose is to portray Creon as the tragic hero and to show the audience how he come to learn from his mistakes. He created the mood of sorrow for adults of all ages. The author’s treatment of Creon’s qualities relates to the overall meaning the play showing that Creon is the tragic hero.

Early on in the play, Phaedra does not yet fit the model of the deceitful

Another love that is classified in the play is romantic love in which Hippolyta voices a desire for, or at least an attraction to, the romantic love which Hermia and Helena experience. In response to Theseus’ comment concerning his disbelief in the lovers’ stories, Hippolyta argues, “But all the story of the night told over, / And all their minds transfigured so together, / More witnesseth than fancy’s image, / And grows to something of great constancy” (5.1.23-26). Hippolyta seems to want to believe the lover’s tales; she wants to trust in their romantic notions. In an attempt to persuade Theseus, she uses the rational argument that because all the lovers experience the same transforming power, their experiences do not represent mere figments

Euripides’ Medea is a controversial play which explores the actions of the protagonist as a result of a moral dilemma. Immediately, the audience’s sympathies for Medea are stirred by the Chorus and Nurse who describe Medea’s suffering coupled with betrayal and immoral actions of her former husband Jason. Despite this however, the audience cannot help being disgusted by the extent Medea goes to in order to guarantee the questionable revenge of her traitorous husband. Although it is without a doubt easy to see that the sorceress’ situation is miserable because of the betrayal by Jason, it is nevertheless very difficult for the viewers to forget that she is vindictive and heartless due to the events that occur during the play’s climax.

Lauren Rostkowski 12B0 Dr. Bushey 31 October 2016 Sympathy for Strong Character Often in a work of literature, an author will create a set of characters whose purpose is to contrast their defining qualities. The purpose of this technique is to highlight the composure of a well-constructed individual and emphasize how these characteristics can lead to the discovery of the good life. The author may also call attention to a character’s persona by fabricating scenarios in which he or she is faced with an obstacle that forces them to question their own values and the values of those surrounding them. Throughout the play, Antigone, by Sophocles, the titular character is faced with an obstacle which threatens her relationship with her uncle, King

In Aristophanes’ comedic play the protagonist Lysistrata called upon the women in the surrounding areas of Greece to discuss her plans for ending the Peloponnesian war which was keeping their husbands away and causing a financial burden to the city of Athens. By withholding sex and using politics we can clearly see how Aristophanes attempted to portray Lysistrata as a strong woman who tried to reverse the roles of men as providers and guardians by reducing them to subservient and obedient subjects for their amusement. Lysistra organized a meeting with the women of the surrounding cities of Greece and attempted to lay out her plans for stopping the war which has caused their husbands to be away from home up to seven months. (Aristophanes,

The overall main causes of the majority of problems the characters in Racine’s “Phaedra” have are due to their own passions. This is despite their roles within a society based upon the idea reason rather than passion. An example of this is the fact that Phaedra loves Hippolytus, despite being her stepson, a passion which she very much feels guilty about it, as it is completely against the established norms of their society. She becomes crazed with this passion, attempting to stay within reason by convincing herself that she must die without telling anyone, feeling that her guilt and shame for it would become worse if others knew. However, her passion eventually defeats her reasoning and logic.

The Phaedrus is a historical dialogue between the two characters, Socrates and Phaedrus, about love. In this dialogue three distinctive speeches were given. The first speech was a speech presented by Phaedrus; the original speaker was a man named Lysias. He claimed that a man in love suffers from a kind of madness and you should not give yourself to one who is in love. The second and third speeches were spoken by Socrates as a sort of challenge given to him by Phaedrus.

While a mother displays Agápe care towards her children, sometimes the affection stems from an act of selfishness of the mother rather than always putting the children before the mother’s well being. Queen Phaedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus displays Agápe for her children by ensuring the child’s prosperous future as heirs to Theseus’ throne. As a mother, Phaedra becomes “helpless to childbirth and its madness, linked to it forever” (Euripides 163-164) and throughout the play readily and eagerly accepts her role as a mother and never once removes her love for her children. However, Phaedra’s love not only exists towards her children but also towards Phaedra’s stepson Hippolytus. Phaedra’s love for her stepson originates as a forced curse from the goddess Aphrodite who wants to punish Hippolytus for not fulfilling his role as a responsible Greek citizen and never praying to her.

Aristotle also writes that “tragedy must seek… cases where the suffering occurs within relationships, such as brother and brother… when one kills (or is about to kill) the other, or commits some other such deed.” While the reversal and the recognition components cause the audience fear and anxiety, suffering bring out the emotion of pity in the hearts of the viewers who are sympathizing with the character. There are several incidences of suffering in the plot. The most prevalent one, again, is Iphigenia about to kill Orestes. Even the chorus laments this tragic deed and they cry out “I cry for you, for your end marked out, the bloody rain of lustral water.”

Sophocles first displays the failure of love through the war and deaths of Polyneices and Eteocles. Polyneices, the brother of Antigone and Eteocles, has broken familial ties and gone against his own people, as he is a commander in the Argive army that attacked his home city of Thebes. With this background, Sophocles is able to reveal how anger can be a stronger emotion than even love as the two brothers met “face to face in a matchless rage” (195). Here it is emphasized that love can be overshadowed by rage and greed as both brothers neglected their shared blood and history and instead were motivated by a place of hate as they fought for power. Rage not only overtook filial love between Polyneices and Eteocles on the battlefield, but before this. Eteocles and Polyneices were unable to share the crown after their father Oedipus’ death. The fight for power ultimately led to Polyneices being exiled from Thebes. This fight for the crown functions as a smaller internal war between the two brothers. Both the internal and external wars allow for love to be exposed as fickle. Love is fickle as it can easily be transformed into hate and this is shown when to loving brothers are torn apart by a single quarrel. With love comes strong emotions and when these emotions are transformed to hate, such hate is unconquerable just as “love (is) unconquerable” (224).

Thésée’s accusation of “d 'inceste et d 'adultère” against Hippolytus triggered him to confess his love for Aricia as a defense. However, it enraged Thésée even more as he perceived it as his son’s atrocious attempt to cover up his “brutale insolence”. This scene helped to transit the play to the ‘falling action’ in which Hippolytus and Thésée unwittingly became the victims of Oenone’s perfidy.