Oresteia Essay

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

The Oresteia is a book of plays written by Aeschylus that centers around the myth of the polis. In each story, the theme of the polis is different. They each want to get revenge or avenge someone that did wrong to someone that they love or loved. The in this story the polis poses questions as what is the nature of justice and what are the methods of establishing and maintaining justice on earth. This story uses the legend of the family Atreus and how he took revenge on his brother, Thyestes, for

The Imagery of Bloodshed in The Oresteia   In the prologue of Agamemnon, the first play of Aeschylus' trilogy, The Oresteia, the watchman implores the gods for "a blessed end to all our pain." (20). He is asking for deliverance from the retributive system of justice, where the only certainty is that bloodshed breeds more bloodshed. The old men of the chorus in their opening chant, "Hymn to Zeus," declare that suffering must be experienced before man can be released from

The trilogy of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia follows a bloody feud within the House of Atreus. With this feud there are many boundaries that get crossed and challenged dealing with revenge and murder. A clear shift in justice is observed over the course of the three plays and Aeschylus shows that this shift in justice as an evolution that must happen to shape a society. The Oresteia provides a message that a society must come together to define justice in order to become unified and it must protect the

In Aeschylus’s trilogy, Oresteia, the tragic manifesto paints a bloody chain of murder, adultery, betrayal, and kinslaying, in which DIKE (justice) and the relation of women to social and family structure serve as central themes. The Greeks were a misogynistic culture, in which women were relegated to an inferior status in society. Women were only given a limited voice because the family was the sovereign unit of society. The rule of justice stood for patriarchy. Cassandra’s importance is merely

In the Oresteia Trilogy, the jury deliberates over the conviction of Orestes, as they deliberate the jurors use a method that uses a black pebble that represents the “guilt” (Aeschylus 21) of Orestes and a white pebble that represents the innocence of Orestes. In literature it is historically noted that the color black is used to symbolize evil or death, whereas, the color white is historically symbolized as purity, goodness, and life. The systemic colorism of people of color, particularly the Black

#1 Oresteia uses imagery of infection and sickness to convey various themes in the story by including the Furies. The Furies guarantee that no blood crime goes without punishment, and throughout this whole play we have many murders and sacrifices take place. The Furies sort of “attack” the people held responsible for the crime by driving them crazy. They make them sick, ill, mad, angry, etc. Infection and sickness is really just used as the punishment in return of the crimes that they have committed

In the play the libation bearers of the Oresteia trilogy comes vengeance that transfers over from the play Agamemnon. Though in the play comes a bright spot where Electra meets her long lost brother Orestes. Nevertheless, this is a story of tragedy because they have to kill their mother. In sense of Greek justice Orestes has the right to kill his mother, for the killing of his father but he will question his actions because it is his mother. The impact of vengeance in the play only ends with more

The Cycle of Vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia   The cyclic thread of vengeance runs like wild fire through the three plays in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. This thread, with its complexity of contemporary and universal implications lends itself quite well to – in fact, almost necessitates – deeply interested study. While a brief summary of the Oresteia will inevitably disregard some if not much of the trilogy’s essence and intent, on the positive side it will establish a platform of characters, events

The Libation Bearers Summary Libation Bearers is part of The Oresteia that Aeschylus wrote. The Greek plays included in The Oresteia were Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. They are in sequential order. In Agamemnon it tells you about his life as a king until his murder. In Aeschylus Libation Bearers in beginning Orestes and Pylades go to Argos to visit Agamemnon in his grave. Agamemnon was killed by Clytemnestra (his wife) and Aegisthus a few years before. Orestes