The story of Electra
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The story of Electra, as a participant in the ancient Greek myth of the curse of the House of Atreus, has fascinated dramatists from ancient times through the 20th Century. The curse is carried out in a continuous cycle of murders based largely on vengeance and justice that involves kinship killings. The shedding of kinship blood, however, even when ordained by the gods, is also a crime that must be punished, generation after generation. No solution exists except doom. This is precisely the situation Electra finds herself in. She must aid her brother Orestes in killing their mother Clytemnestra out of justified revenge for the killing of their father, Agememnon. (Another sister, Choephoroe, does not choose to take part). But Electra and Orestes must also be punished for killing their mother, a crime against nature. So those who are fated to carry on the ancestral curse find themselves in a double bind: theyÆre damned if they do, and theyÆre damned if they donÆt. This paper will compare and contrast the treatment of Electra in the plays by Sophocles and Euripides. Also under discussion will be how the character of Electra has been portrayed by other writers such as Aeschylus, and modern American playwright Eugene OÆNeill. Issues under consideration are the mythographic content, emotional makeup, heroism and morality/ethics of the Electra plays. While the dramatists under consideration in this paper adhere to the basic myth of Electra, their approaches differ as depi
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ngth: ôDeath she (Electra) disregards, she is ready to face it/ To snare those furies. What nature so splendid?ö (Sophocles 91).
ElectraÆs resolve to kill the King (commit regicide) is depicted by Sophocles not as a moral issue, but as an ethical activity that is predicated on the inevitability of righting wrongs one has experienced. Blundell cites the traditional Greek ethical code as the basis of all Sophocelan tragedy; that, in fact, the code itself was tragic since it demanded that abstract notions of justice and injustice, right and wrong, give way to the fulfillment of the reestablishment of the highest order, Dike. And that such fulfillment necessarily entails catastrophe (Blundell passim). This assertion may be understood in light of the fact that there was no civil law during ElectraÆs time, only the laws of the gods that dictated the ethical code under which mortals lived. Therefore, the situation Electra finds herself in necessarily entails catastrophe as she carries out her part in the ancient blood feud of the House of Atreus.
ElectraÆs contention is that her mother and stepfatherÆs killing of her father was the excess of revenge. Her mother contends she and Aegisthus killed Agamemnon because he killed her da
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2294
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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