February 2005 Archives
All drama seeks to answer one critical question: what does it mean to be human? For many plays, this question also involves an analysis of man's relationship to the divine, if such a thing even exists. Both Euripides's and Sophocles's versions of Electra challenge traditional religious views and man's dependence upon the gods. Ultimately, both playwrights espouse the same virtue: individual responsibility. The means by which they do so, however, differ radically.
Both Euripides's and Sophocles's versions of Electra come across as surprisingly modern. Euripides was critical of religion and the government. He strongly opposed Athens's involvement in the Peloponnesian War. He felt that Athens was abandoning its principles and its people needed to reclaim the virtue that once embodied their city. These virtues, however, should be secular. Likewise, though Sophocles is generally considered Homeric and traditional, his Electra reads like a post-Enlightenment work. Euripides was likely an outright atheist. Sophocles held on to vague ideas more consistent with 18th century deism.
Sophocles is more direct and confrontational with his play than Euripides. Sophocles's version ends with the execution of Aegisthus. He has Orestes kill Clytemnestra first; he does not want to play up the significance of the fact that Orestes kills his own mother. The play is therefore able to end with the wholly unobjectionable killing of the adulterer and usurper, Aegisthus, for whom the audience surely feels no pity. In his final speech, Orestes declares, "I must take care that death is bitter for you. Justice shall be taken directly on all who act above the law-justice by killing. So we would have less villains" (Sophocles 187). The chorus then praises his act. Therefore, Orestes acts not merely as a son avenging his murdered father but as an executioner, carrying out the final justice against a treasonous villain. This new Orestes, defender of justice, is consequently set to assume his duties as king, ultimate defender of the state.
Another major difference is in how Orestes first presents himself to Electra. In Sophocles's version, he comes under the guise of a Phocian countryman, bearing the ashes of Orestes, who supposedly died in a grisly chariot racing accident. Paedagogus, messenger of this tragedy, explains, "… when a God sends mischief, not even the strong man may escape." Of course, there was no such divine intervention. Sophocles repeatedly has characters attribute events to the gods, but no divine figure is ever on the stage. Indeed, the will of the gods is present only in prophecies of the priests and in the inventive interpretation of the characters. When people pray to the gods, it is only because they have a specific need for divine intervention, but there is no such intervention. As has been the case in many wars, both sides think the same god or gods are on their side. Sophocles's obvious message is that the gods are not on anybody's side. His Electra is a highly deistic play, emphasizing the importance of volition. In his humanistic recasting of the story, humans are not merely pawns in a cosmic chess game. The gods may exist in some abstract manner, but the notion that anthropomorphic (or even animal-like) manifestations of squabbling deities interferes with our daily, mundane existence is absurd. In Sophocles's Electra, the gods never appear or directly intervene. People pray only when they want something. His play fairly openly mocks religious beliefs. Both Clytemnestra and Orestes believe that the god Apollo is on their side. His divine will is revealed only through human priests. A central theme is that people have a free will. Each murder is not simply the inexorable result of an absurd story from generations prior, but rather is independently decided upon by the murderers. A volitional murderer is fully responsible for his or her own actions. Thus, in his final speech, Orestes declares, "Justice shall be taken directly on all who act above the law" (Sophocles 187). We must assume in Sophocles's version that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus were not actually murdered, but justifiably executed. Euripides, by contrast, has Orestes pretend to be a comrade of Orestes, slinking around to gather information. This deception serves no real plot purpose and appears possibly as an inconsonant vestige of the story, or perhaps merely to heighten the drama. Aristotle praises recognition; a deceit, however utterly pointless to the plot, allows for the recognition thereof.
One other difference is the presence of Chrysothemis, Electra's and Orestes's sister, in Sophocles's version. Sophocles uses her to underscore the importance of free will and individual responsibility. In both versions of the play, Electra is waiting for Orestes to return to the kingdom to rectify the past wrongs. In Sophocles's version, however, Electra, impatient with Orestes, shows great initiative. She plots against Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, entreating her sister to help her. Chrysothemis has willingly submitted to the rule of the regicides and Electra condemns her for her collaboration with such loathsome degenerates. Swayed by the righteous pleas of her sister, Chrysothemis agrees to offer her assistance. Sophocles thus further emphasizes the importance of volition. Both were women, but they made the free choice to act against injustice. Moreover, the ability of Electra to persuade her sister shows how humans are not only volitional beings, but rational as well. We are capable of great achievements, with no need for the gods to tell us what is right and wrong.
Euripides's version ostensibly supports traditional roles for the sexes and the supremacy of the gods. Read literally and without knowledge of his atheistic background, the text seems to support the idea that powerless and unknowledgeable man should be humble before the gods. At the end of his play, the Dioscuri must come in and fix the situation that man has so haphazardly, and inexorably, bungled. We know, however, that Euripides did not support such a position. The key revelation in the text comes when the Dioscuri place all the blame on Apollo (63). The conclusion, and much of the rest of the play, must therefore be read ironically; the deus ex machina is absurd.
Euripides begins his play with a farmer giving a lengthy explication of the background situation. The farmer speaks as well of Agamemnon as he does as poorly of Aegisthus, but only briefly and only through implication. Clytemnestra, however, receives lengthier and explicit attention. He calls her "savage in soul" (10), before offering a limited pseudo-defense. Aegisthus wanted to kill Electra but Clytemnestra "flinched from killing a child, afraid of the world's contempt" (10). It initially seems that she has a real moral problem with killing her own children, but she really just wants to avoid the odious stares of her less-than-faithful subjects. She is a selfless queen, wholly devoted to activities that are as harmful as they are unfulfilling. The only action she takes in the entire story that could conceivably bring her-or anyone else, for that matter-happiness is her affair with Aegisthus, and that turns out badly for both. Maybe she simply sought political power. If such were the case, she would still be deriving all her value from others. She lacks any real sense of self. She has a body, but what resides in it is less than human, a "savage soul." It is significant that Euripides uses a lowly farmer to make such a crushing statement about royalty. The capacity to discern the nature of man exists in all humans, not just the powerful. This perhaps reflects his opposition to the war. The politicians, lacking regard for what is truly of value to them and their subjects, recklessly pursue meaningless conquests. Properly, people ought to take the responsibility to identify real values, and then act to achieve them. What do Clytemnestra and Aegisthus gain from regicide? What do the Athenians gain from going to war with their neighbors? A cycle of violence for which more blood must be spilled.
Euripides and Sophocles, at least in these two plays, present surprisingly similar messages. Sophocles is unambiguous and openly didactic. Euripides writes a play so flagrantly contradictory to his own views that it must be satire. If people are going to believe in divine intervention then he is going to give it to them, in an over-the-top plot resolution. The real message of both playwrights is that man is a volitional being who must accept responsibility for his own actions.
Bibliography
Euripides. Electra. Trans. Emily Townsend Vermeule. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1959.
Sophocles. Electra. Trans. David Grene. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.
[The preceding is a paper I just wrote for my Greek tragedies class that I thought too good to let lie on my computer unseen and unplagerizable.]
