The Theme Of Dirality In The Bacchae

In Euripides’ the Bacchae, the city of Thebes is shown to have a system of political inheritance as Pentheus is given control over the city by his grandfather Cadmus, the founder of the city. The god Dionysus is also a grandson of Cadmus, yet is not chosen to be the heir to Thebes, which creates a rivalry between Dionysus and Pentheus. Pentheus does not allow Dionysus into the city of Thebes or give recognition to Dionysus at all. Dionysus and Pentheus both wish to establish their own political rule over the city of Thebes. Pentheus attempts to rule Thebes in an Apollonian fashion. The women brought to Thebes by Dionysus are put under arrest at the order of Pentheus, due to the drunken partying they were having due to Dionysus’ powers. The women’s party went against the social order enforced by the city of Thebes, and Dionysus

He could not believe anything could harm him. (B270) Pentheus in his own conceit thinks he can do anything. He feels he is so powerful that no man is above him. (B476) He is not able to see that Dionysus is a god because he is in human form. Pentheus needs to see everything before he can accept it. (B255) By Pentheus agreeing to dress up like a woman, he is asking for a tragic ending. He now begins to listen to Dionysus who he had bound with chains before. He shows how gullible he is, to think Dionysus will now help him. He cannot see himself being set up to take a large fall. (B310) When Teiresias tells Pentheus "Do not be so certain that power is what matters in life," Pentheus still feels confident. Pentheus was doomed because he did not believe other peoples word about the power of Dionysus.

Our play was the tragedy Hecuba which was written by Euripides in 424 BC, 7 years after the beginning of the Peloponnesian and Archidamian War which was fought between Athens and Sparta. Euripides was an Athenian who was born around 485BC on the island of Salamis which is off the coast of Piraeus. He competed several times in Athens’ annual City Dionysia, which, as we know, was a dramatic festival held in honour of Dionysus. This means that the majority of his audience would have been Athenians, like himself.

Greek tragedies Oedipus the King and Euripides’ Bacchae are both timeless stories in Greek literature. The engaging plot of both is what is most rememberable however the significance of the chorus is overlooked. The chorus can be defined simply as a group of dancers and singers that participate in dramas by singing poetically and lyrically in certain pauses of the play. The music, movements and gestures of the chorus symbolically define the mood and the themes of the play as the story line develops. The flow of Oedipus the King and Bacchae are dependent on the chorus, proving their significance.

Dionysus has long-hair, rosy cheeks and displays no overtly frightening qualities yet Pentheus takes an instant dislike to the strange, beautiful and charming stranger that has appeared in his land. Pentheus tries to reestablish his authority over the stranger during a verbal battle upon their first encounter. Dionysus baits Pentheus to try and reestablish his rule and Pentheus asserts his position as a great and powerful ruler by announcing, "But I say: chain him. And I am the stronger here." (ln 503). He denounces the god as a fake and decides that hanging is a just punishment for the imposter who dares to challenge Pentheus' rule. Dionysus is

These lines from the play indicate the Dionysus’s behavior after he received punishment from the King of Thebes, Pentheus. In reference to Euripides’ Bacchae the Play and its Audience it states that Euripides was protesting the religious ideas of that time (Oranje 8). Religion in Greek Theatre is different since the Greeks’ perspective are fearing the Gods and worship them out of fear, then for will is mostly seen in this play. On the other hand in the play, Atsumori by Zeami Motokiyo the play is influenced by Buddhism, and in contrast to The Bacchae this play is more peaceful where the characters find peace and understanding with one another. In The Norton Anthology of Drama, it states: “In this ghost-warrior play, dramatic conflict is minimized,” Atsumori is more focused on finding peace rather than action, different from The Bacchae (Gainor, Garner, and Puchner 525).

Euripides’ The Bacchae is a play that uses contrasting places to represent opposing forces or ideas. Specifically, Euripides uses the city of Thebes to represent the West and he uses the surrounding wilderness to represent the East. The West is associated with the ideas of rationality, conformity, and appearance while the East is associated with the ideas of irrationality, nonconformity, and reality.

The first binary opposition that is present in both plays is man and god. Marvin describes binary oppositions as being against each other and one being superior to the other (1), such as man and god. In The Bacchae, Dionysus is the god and Pentheus is the man, and both of them are always clashing heads about who has the right to power over the other. Dionysus clearly shows his superiority over Pentheus, showing the superiority of god over man. The chorus leader described Dionysus’ superiority over Pentheus, “Look how quickly Pentheus’ palace will be shaken to its fall! Dionysus is in the palace. Worship him!” (Euripides, Bacchae III: 586-589). Another way that Dionysus is showing the god over man binary opposition is when he manipulates Pentheus to dress as a woman to feel protected when he is really setting him up to be murdered. Pentheus is at first hesitant of dressing like a female and inquires he not dress like a woman, however, Dionysus further manipulates Pentheus by explaining that if he does not dress like a woman to hide his true identity, he will be murdered (Euripides, Bacchae III: 836-837). In

As the play opens, Dionysus’ reasoning for retuning to Thebes, is exemplified by the fact that he is there to avenge his mother’s reputation because his “mother’s sisters… gossiped that this Dionysus was no child of Zeus” (32-34). The chorus then goes on to tell the back story of Dionysus and how “quicker than death / Zeus swept him up,” after his mother’s unfortunate

This play written by Euripides has several little main ideas throughout but one of the main ones that I am going to focus on is the disguise and trickery Dionysus is able to perform to get what he wants. Throughout the play Dionysus never got the respect that he felt that he deserved from the other gods. The reason that Dionysus received no respect is because he is mortal; his mother who was a mortal gave birth to him by a god, so in the world they are living in this makes him equal to the humans not the gods. Because Dionysus was both Greek and Asiatic, along with being part god and part human this made him a very diverse being. Dionysus soon realized though that he could use this to his own advantage, he could easily be disguised as a

Euripides, in his tragedy, ‘Medea’ has embodied values of his time by critiquing and questioning his own social, cultural and historical context. The play, sensitive to the zeitgeist and its influence on philosophy, was written having recourse on the apprehensions and morality of non-partisanship and equilibrium, set against a discordant society. The characterisation of Medea allowed Euripides to challenge customary xenophobic beliefs delimitating the humanity of herself and others. The obstinacy of such values gave birth to the rebel with a cause.

Euripides was born around 485 B.C. in Athens, Greece. As stated earlier he was one of the most popular dramatists in classic Greek culture; of the 92 plays he supposedly wrote,80 of the titles are known, and of the plays 19 have survived today (Banham). The most famous of his dramatic tragedies recreate Greek legends and interact with the darker side of human nature which will be seen in Orestes (Wilson). Facts about Euripides’s life are not known for certain, it is said that he was born into a prosperous family, his father was named Mnesarchus, and his mother was named Cleito. Euripides, among every other major playwright of this era, competed in the Athenian dramatic festivals, which take place to honor the god, Dionysus. He started

Evaluation of Euripides Euripides has met the conventions of Attic Tragedy up to a particular

desire to individuate and our desire to unify. The play describes the conflict between Pentheus’

Aeschylus’s play Prometheus Bound portrays the conflict between the two most powerful factors in human life: knowledge against force or equivalently, intellect against might. Set in a world that is conflicted between opposing political ideals of democracy and tyranny, the play characterizes the protagonist Prometheus as the champion of man who symbolizes the rebel against the tyrant and depicts Zeus as the destroyer of man. Prometheus, nailed to a rock on Caucasus, is at the mercy of Zeus for disobeying his authority by giving fire–”blind hopes” or practical reason– to mankind. Prometheus encounters the characters Io, the chorus, and Hermes, whose characterizations as well as references to Zeus suggest whether Aeschylus’s sentiments lie with Prometheus or Zeus. The play describes images of animal domestication, fire, and bondage, which deepen Prometheus’s relationships with these characters and lend insight into the nature of all human existence, suggesting that Aeschylus sides with Prometheus.