Orestes enters in the guise of a messenger from Phocis. He bears an urn with the ashes of Orestes, he says. Electra is devasted, worse than before. It's all over for her now. She thought her actions-- saving Orestes as a baby, standing up to her mother-- would eventually lead to justice, but it seems not to be. Orestes sees now that he is speaking with his sister, and feels horrible. He laments for her now-- not only putting on a show over her supposed loss, but also genuinely lamenting the terrible burden she has had to endure in the palace, alone, for years.
But for some reason he draws out his own reveal for, like, two-and-a-half pages. When he finally gets around to it, Electra is elated.
Orestes explains that they still have to be careful, for his plan is set in motion. Pedaegogus comes out and scolds them for being so loud-- if Orestes is found out, it's all over. Electra recognizes him at last and praises him for his service in raising Orestes.
They give praise to Apollo before executing the plan. The Chorus remarks that it looks as if Apollo himself is exacting revenge when Orestes strides into the hall.
From outside, Electra hears the dying cries of Clytemnestra and mutters encouragements in response. Aegisthus arrives, and Electra reports the death of Orestes, saying his body is inside. (Tee-hee.) Aegisthus is pleased-- brazenly pleased. He sees the covered body on the bed, but Orestes himself reveals it to by Clytemnestra. Aegisthus, done for, asks to be allowed to speak some last words. Denied. Orestes, egged on by Electra, will not indulge him one bit, but will instead kill him in the spot where Agamemnon is killed.
The Chorus is elated with the turn toward justice:
O race of Atreus, how many sufferings
were yours before you came at last so hardly
to freedom, perfected by this day's deed.
--------------------------
And that's it.
The attitude of the Chorus is identical to what Aeschylus wrote about. Except Aeshylus continued on to explain that the actions of Orestes will lead to his own ultimate downfall, his harassment by the Furies.
But this play isn't about Orestes, it's about Electra. And at this point, her life's arc has come to a fitting conclusion. She has spent her whole life devoted to a single cause, and she has seen it through to the end. The deaths of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (note: the killings are in the reverse order here versus in the Aeschylus) are what she has been working on for years, even if it was never in her power to execute them herself. Devotion to justice is good in and of itself, and is rewarded. And damn the consequences. I guess.
Clytemnestra enters to have a word with her unruly daughter. She defends her actions by reminding Electra (and the audience) of the injustice of Agamemnon killing their other daughter [Iphigenia] merely to placate the Greek army and his brother Menelaus. Surely she is in the right in vindicating her own daughter. Electra counters that Clytemnestra did the murder for her own selfish reasons: to be with the usurper Aegisthus. Moreover, Agamemnon's killing of Iphigenia was in direct accordance with the wishes of Artemis. Did Clytemnestra have any divine instruction before her murders? More back-and-forth. The Chorus is confused.
Paedogogus enters, in disguise and unrecognized. He brings "pleasant news" [?] to Clytemnestra: Orestes is dead. He was killed in a chariot race at a set of contests he was winning. There was a pile-up on turn four, and in the mayhem Orestes was thrown from his chariot and trampled. Electra is devastated, but Clytemnestra is demure. Paedogogus is surprised she is not relieved, for it is well known that Orestes was a threat to Aegisthus's throne. Clytemnestra explains that Electra has always been more a thorn in their side, living within the palace and all. Electra is ready to give up on her life completely. The Chorus wonders if there is any justice in the world at all.
Chrysothemis enters, also claiming to bear "happy" news. Orestes is alive! She saw sacrifices at Agamemnon's grave, including flowers and a lock of hair that could only be Orestes's. Electra breaks the bad news, but offers counsel. She has steeled herself for what must be done: the task of avenging Agamemnon's murder falls to the two of them. Chrysothemis, ever timid, wavers. They, two women, have not hope of pulling off such a plot. Electra blows her off and decides to go it alone, and Chrysothemis can't talk her out of it. The Chorus wishes her success, for she is the only one left so devoted in the pursuit of justice.
Paedogogus arrives at the palace in Mycenae with Orestes in tow. Paedogogus had taken Orestes, son of Agamemnon, from the palace as a boy and raised him himself to protect the boy from his mother Clytemnestra and her new husband (and new king) Aegisthus. Orestes has recently heard prophecies that it is time for him to avenge his father. He is to kill his father's murderes through stealth, so he hatches the plan: Paedogogus will enter and announce the recent and unfortunate death of Orestes in a chariot race. Meanwhile, Orestes will visit his father's grave, and leave an offering of a lock of his own hair, to prepare for his coming actions.
Inside, Orestes' sister Electra laments-- at length-- the evil murder of her father. Though she has lived with the sorrow for many years, she is at the end of her rope and can't simply stand by and live in the household with her wicked mother and her usurper husband any longer. The Chorus, other women in the palace, agree with her outrage over the murder, but urge her to get over it already. She cannot. Electra holds special contempt for Clytemnestra, who has ridiculed her all her life for her devotion to her father. Electra's only relief is the thought that Orestes might soon be returning to exact vengeance and justice. But even that, at times, seems to be a fading hope.
Chrysothemis, Electra's (younger?) sister, enters and scolds Electra for carrying on. Chrysothemis isn't thrilled with the way Agamemnon was murdered, either, but she has managed to make some peace with the situation and can live as a participant within the palace. Electra knocks her down a peg or two for doing so. Chrysothemis is more upset than ever, though, for the latest news is that the king will banish Electra to a cave. Electra, defiant, announces she will gladly accept such a "punishment" if it will highlight the type of unjust ruler Aegisthus is.
In the meantime, Chrysothemis is on her way to Agamemnon's grave to leave an offering-- an offering from Clytemnestra, in fact. Surprised, Electra asks how it is that Clytemnestra is paying any tribute to her previous husband at all. But it seems the queen has had visions and nightmares recently about Agamemnon, and is trying to put things right between her and the gods. Hearing this, Electra forbids that the offering be given, as it is coming from such an evil source. Instead, she instructs Chrysothemis to leave a lock of her own and of Electra's hair at the grave-- a proper tribute from devoted daughters, rather than from a treacherous wife. They're all in agreement that this is a good course of action.
----------------------------
I think this is the first play that telling is telling the same story, at length, as a previous play I've read-- The Libation Bearers. It's kind of cool to get the story from a different persepective, and even cooler that the actions of the various characters seem to line up pretty closely. I remember, at least, the locks of hair left at Agamemnon's grave being the signal to Electra that Orestes had arrived, Clytemnestra's nightmares, and Orestes simply entering the palace to commit the avenging killings.
This play seems to be presenting a psychological portrait of Electra, a character who didn't quite have a full direct participation in the action in Aeschylus's play. The long lamenting passages paint a fairly clear picture of Electra's current mental state. She has been brooding for years, but has been helpless to exact revenge. All the while, she has been assigning blame to the family around her, despising some and resenting others-- again, all because it is not within her power to do much of else. Her internal torment shows a fighting spirit nonetheless.
The shepherd arrives. Oedipus struts a bit as he interrogates him, but the shepherd is reticent to speak. Oedipus switches to threats. Finally, the shepherd admits to freeing the young baby... who he had been instructed to kill... by the baby's parents... in the house of Laius... intending to avoid a prophecy that he would one day kill his father. And swears he did it out of pity, though he clearly regrets his actions now. Oedipus finally gets it:
Lost! Ah lost! At last it's blazing clear.
Light of my days, go dark. I want to gaze no more.
My birth all sprung revealed from those it never should,
Myself entwined with those I never could.
And I the killer of those I never would.
[Nice work, Mr. Roche.] He flees into the palace.
The Chorus is also aghast. At first, they lament the downfall of so great a man as Oedipus. Their disgust grows, though.
Palace workers emerge with even more disturbing news. The queen Jocasta killed herself by hanging in her bedroom chamber, cursing the bed which she shared with Laius and Oedipus. Upon finding her body, Oedipus seized her broaches and gouged his eyes out with the pins-- repeatedly. He seeks only now to be banished from Thebes. He-- and the Chorus-- wish he had died that day on the mountainside.
Creon enters, now the acknowledged new king of Thebes. Oedipus begs to be banished, but Creon insists on seeking the gods' advice before proceeding further. After all, it is not more clear than ever that they are truly in charge. In the meantime, Oedipus tries to settle some parts of his estate. His sons, he thinks, will be fine. His daughters, though-- Antigone and Ismene-- will be done for. Who will ever marry them knowing thaeir infamous pedigree? Creon brings the girls before Oedipus, and he imparts final advice:
My darling little ones, if you could only understand,
I'd tell you, oh, so many things!
Let this suffice, a simple prayer:
Abide in modesty so may you live
the happy life your father did not have.
Oedipus is ready to exit to his doom, but tries to cling to his daughters one last time. Creon rebukes him:
Stop this striving to be master of all.
The mastery you had in life has been your fall.
----------------------------
Remember when I said this was a comedy? Not anymore. Multiple puncture wounds to the eyes keep it firmly in the tragedy camp.
I remember reading this in high school and mentally playing around with the paradoxes of fate. What is fated is fated, and all actions-- even those attempting to avoid the outcome-- lead to that inevitable result. Cool idea, and fun to puzzle out, and see it applied in time-travel movies and soforth.
There's a slightly deeper aspect to this, though. Once we've conceded that fate is real and unavoidable, the important question is our attitude towards it. The true disasters took place because the characters wouldn't merely submit to their fates. Jocasta was far too meddlesome, trying to place herself above the power of the gods in charting her own life. Her attempts were doomed from the start. Oedipus, on the other hand, seems to have the opposite problem. In some ways, he was too ready to take advantage of the fates he could see laid out before him. He happily commandeered the leadership of Thebes, and aggrandized himself in the process, never acknowledging that his successes were no more due to his merit than any other person's failures were due to their faults. He too put himself above the gods, not in his attempts to outwit them, but in his delusional self-regard and belief in his own prowess. Creon, in the end, displays the proper outlook, and gives us the true moral of the play.
Oedipus recognizes the story of Laius's murder as that of the murder he committed. He sees himself as the cause of the city's troubles after all, and is in agony over it. [He doesn't know the half of it. Strike that, he doesn't know the tenth of it yet. Laius's murder is the least of his problems.] There was one survivor from the murder, a servant who, upon seeing Oedipus take the throne, asked to return to shepherding, his previous career. Oedipus asks that he be brought in, and the exact circumstances of Laius's murder matched against his own memory.
In the meantime, Oedipus tells his own story. At home in Corinth, he was told in passing that he was adopted. Unnerved, his parents Polybus and Merope tried to set his mind at ease. But he went to an oracle, whose prophecy was far worse than just the adoption news. He was told he would murder his father and marry his mother. Horrified at the prospect, he fled. And on the road, he had an altercation with a travelling band at the three crossroads. He killed them. And now he might be responsible for Laius's death. Jocasta tries to calm him, saying at the very least the prophets don't know what they're talking about-- because Laius certainly wasn't killed by his son!
The Chorus try to wrap their heads around the situation. They know that justice must be done against Oedipus if he really is the killer. On the other hand, if prophecies go unfulfilled so easily, why must any respect be paid to them at all?
A messenger enters with news from Corinth. Polybus is dead, and Oedipus will inherit that throne. It's good news! And even better, this tells against the prophecy that was giving Oedipus so much grief-- he didn't have to kill his father after all! [Nobody has noticed up to this point the similarity between Oedipus's prophecy and that of Jocasta.] Oedipus is still fearful of returning home, fearful of the second half of the prophecy-- marrying his mother. The messenger explains that the whole prophecy was never anything to worry about in the first place-- after all, Polybus wasn't even Oedipus's real father! Oedipus was adopted, brought to the king by this messenger himself, after being found as an infant with his ankles bound on a hill near Thebes!
Jocasta is getting upset.
And actually, this messenger didn't find Oedipus per se. He was found by another shepherd-- one of Laius's men. The Chorus thinks perhaps this is the same guy who they already called about the other story. They ask Jocasta if she remembers anything, but she's suddenly playing dumb and trying to change the subject. Oedipus wants to know all about his origins, but Jocasta is begging him not to follow through to the end of the story. But he's feeling upbeat now, and thinks she'll be embarrassed by his lowly station, if he's the abandoned son of slaves. But perhaps he is the son of the gods themselves! Tee-hee!
The Chorus gets carried away thinking of the possibilites. Here among them, offspring of the divine! That kind of thing never happens anymore! Awesome!
---------------------------
The language games are getting more and more clever-- but I can't tell if it's Sophocles or Roche making more of it than is actually there. A sampling:
"This is his palace, sir, and he's within.
This lady [Jocasta] is his wife and mother... of his children." [Come on.]
Alex's raw translation was "But this woman is mother of his children." After giving him the context, he acknowledged there was something goofy going on in the structure of the second line. He then suggested "Wife and mother, this one, of his children," which is pretty close to the effect of Roche's version, though a little more subtle. Success!]
"I do not blush to own I'm Forgune's pampered child.
She will not let me down. She is my mother."
One other line of note, when Jocasta is trying to settle down Oedipus's fear of the prophecy of him marrying his mother:
"Forget this silly thought of mother-marrying.
Why, many men in dreams have married mothers,
And he lives happiest who makes the least of it."
A clinical description of the Oedipal Complex! I always thought that Freud simply named it after the character because it was such a well-known story. But it looks like the psychological phenomenon itself was mentioned right in the play. We've gone totally meta.
The prophet Tiresias enters, but refuses to speak, for what he knows hurts him too much to make public. Oedipus tries to flatter it out of him, to no avail. Angry now, Oedipus accuses Tiresias himself of being the murderer, or at least plotting it years ago. That pisses him off something fierce. Tiresias now directly fingers Oedipus as the murderer, which just makes the confrontation more contentious than before.
Not understaning the accusation at all, Oedipus thinks he has stumbled on the real plot. He claims that Creon has put the prophet up to it, in a power play to usurp the throne. (And he thinks himself enormously clever for figuring it out.) Tiresias is more insulted than ever, and curses out Oedipus. He starts to hint at the truth, at Oedipus's origins, but Oedipus simply mocks him for speaking in riddles-- solving such riddles is his strength, after all. So in a final speech before exiting, Tiresias tells it to him straight (though without actually mentioning his name): the murderer was no stranger, but a native of Thebes, is his children's brother, his mother's husband, and will die in disgrace.
The Chorus is greatly upset from the argument. And they don't want to think of the implications of Tiresias's accusation.
Creon enters and gets an earful from Oedipus, being accused of attempting to usurp the throne. Oedipus knows he's in cahoots with the prophet-- otherwise the prophet would have fingered Oedipus for the murder when it actually happened instead of waiting until now. Creon pleads his case: in the current arrangement, as brother-in-law to the king, he has an equal say in the affairs of the state without the hassle of actually being the monarch. Why would he want to give that up? Oedipus is not settled, and the conflict escalates.
Jocasta the queen enters: "Everybody, cool out. COOL OUT!" The chorus pleads with Oedipus to simmer down. Paranoia now seems to be catching up with him, as he lashes out at everyone around him. Jocasta just wants to know what all the fuss was about, and Oedipus explains that the prophet had accused him of the murder. I mean, it's preposterous!
Jocasta chuckles about it. "Silly, long ago Apollo foretold that Laius would be killed by his firstborn. And yeah, he was killed at a three-way crossroads. But that was in a faraway land, by a band of marauders! And we had abandoned our firstborn on a hillside as soon as he was born! So, no worries!"
Oedipus: "Yeah, I mean.... wait, what?"
---------------------
Heh.
One very cool bit of irony in this part is Creon pleading his innocence and claiming to be free from the temptations of power. One, because the audience already knows the rest of his story, and two, because Sophocles already wrote that play himself. You're not fooling anyone, you know.
The people of Thebes are beseeching their king, Oedipus, to help them. The priest explains that they want to be rid of the plague that holds them. They know that once before Oedipus rid them of one terrible trouble-- the Sphinx. They hope that Oedipus can again be the savior for the people. Oedipus: "Yes, of course. I knew all that already. In fact, I've already sent my brother-in-law [actually his uncle] to learn from the oracle of Apollo what might be done."
Creon arrives and announces that, per Apollo, the solution is simple. The city suffers because the death of its previous king, Laius, went wholly unpunished. Oedipus asks the circumstances of his death, and Creon relates the story of how Laius was killed, along with his band of travellers, during a pilgrimage outside the city. Oedipus: "Sons of bitches."
The Chorus pray to the gods for their aid to Oedipus in finally righting the wrong. They pray to a number of gods in turn, especially Athena, Artemis, and Apollo.
Oedipus gathers the people and asks that anyone with any knowledge of Laius's death to come forward, but is only met with silence. He tries to cajole their confession with flattery and rewards. When that doesn't work, he threatens them with punishment. Nobody comes forward [because no one actually knows anything]. At last the Chorus suggests that Oedipus consult with the blind prophet Tiresias. Oedipus: "Of course. I've already sent for him." The Chorus also hints at stories of the murder of Laius by other travellers, but there are no witnesses.
Tiresias enters, and Oedipus grandly asks him to proclaim what he knows, so that he might get on with the saving of the city.
Shit's about to get real.
-------------------------
Translation by Paul Roche again, and it's a breath of fresh air after The Women of Trachis. Here I can actually feel the rhythm of the translated poetry. The structure of the Chorus sections is also quite pleasing, as he delineates the call-and-response pattern of the two halves of the Chorus. The translation really makes a huge difference.
I'm starting to get pissed off that all of the cool action is in the back stories of these plays. Oedipus's step-parents already heard the original prophecy and sent him away in a panic, Oedipus already killed his father and married his mother, and Oedipus already solved the riddle of the Sphinx. Okay..... but when do I actually get to read any of this stuff? I don't, apparently.
It occurs to me, then, that there's no such thing as a twist in any of these plays. The stories are so well known that they make up the background knowledge in the Greek cultural awareness. Nothing in the plot of the play is ever surprising. But I wonder if they told the stories to children in such a way as to surprise them with the plot twists? Hmmm.
To make up for the lack of tension in the plot, the lines themselves are packed with irony-- highly entertaining for the all-knowing audience. The characterization is crucial as well. In this case, Sophocles has made Oediups a self-aggrandizing buffoon-- and it's hilarious. "Yes, of course, I'm one step ahead of you." And some of the ironic lines are particularly well-placed:
For who knows, tomorrow this selfsame murderer
may turn his bloody hands on me.
The cause of Laius therefore is my own.
....
And if I myself should prove myself
to have him in my halls an intimate,
Then on myself I call down every curse I've just invoked.
Is this a drama or a comedy? The audience must have been roaring with laughter.
