Aeschylus: The Oresteia

October - November 2006

CAMI

So here is a quote to Jake from me last night: “Go away! This guy is about to kill his mother who killed his father who killed his sister and now the Gods are going to kill him!” Only I was wrong. They didn’t kill him. Instead we have some sort of euphoric ending where Athena distracts the Furies into forgetting about their revenge. Hmmm. . . too bad no one else was distracted. It seems like revenge was the heart of this story.

Here is what I thought of Agamemnon. I thought the whole thing sounded so much like a horrible abuse cycle. Everything was about passing the blame (usually to destiny) and how there was no agency. The Libation Bearers, my favorite. In this one I see both Electra and Orestes try to break the cycle. I see at least some sort of moral conflict rather than everything justice, justice, justice. The Eumenides was just like watching an episode of “Law and Order.” It was all about semantics, persuasion, the battle for glory in the courtroom. This trial stopped being about justice, and started being about who could cause enough confusion for the question to be forgotten.

All in all, I found these plays to be much more accessible to modern days than I thought they would be. I was pleased to see they read so much like Shakespeare (it felt just like reading King Lear, what with all the family members killing each other), but I was really glad of the summary Mom gave me about the family curse.

JANICE

Luckily, my edition's intro explained the family curse or I would have been lost. To me these plays were just one big act of human infamy after another, showing the worst side of humanity. There was not a redeeming quality in anyone. No forgiveness, no patience, no humility, no personal sacrifice, no mercy. Only selfishness, pride, and revenge, which was rightly shown as bad. I guess the gods let Orestes off the hook because he had a good reason to go temporarlily insane. But so did Clytemnestra what with her husband killing her daughter. I think the gods just didn't want to deal with the mess anymore. Even they were at a loss. The story was interesting, what with the proud purple robes entrapping proud Agamemnon, the old lesson that two wrongs don't make a right, how one crime can bring on another and revenge is the worst motivation. Sure glad this was fiction. Horrible! The skeletons in this family's closet beat all.

JULIA

Just finished The Orestia Trilogy by Aeschylus. I liked the last book the best, The Furies. It was like a court case to see if Orestes would be found guilty. I guess it was a hung jury. The plays read like Shakespeare and the more I got into it, the more I liked it, my eyes and inner voice moving along in rhythm to iambic pentameter. It was fun to see some common phrases we use now, like "red-handed." The argument about who is the REAL parent was interesting. The argument favored the father as the mother was merely a womb for his seed. Didn't they know the woman contributed an egg?

My favorite quote form A. is by Electra when she says, "Children are memory's voices, and preserve/The dead from wholly dying, as a net/Is ever by the buoyant corks upheld."