He claims that Orestes has been killed in a tragic chariot accident. Chrysothemis agrees and leaves to do so. Electra remains outside the palace, wailing, and Chrysothemis excitedly runs back to her. As Electra mourns, her sister, Chrysothemis approaches and urges her to give up her useless anger. When Clytemnestra married her lover she kicked Electra and her brother Orestes out of the house. The old slave wonders if it is Electra and suggests they stop and listen, but Orestes insists that their first stop has to be Agamemnon’s grave. Orestes’s father, Agamemnon, was murdered years ago, and Orestes’s sister, Electra, gave the infant Orestes to the old slave. “Electra“ (Gr: “Elektra“) is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. Orestes is back in town and he is ready for revenge. Orestes wasn’t sure whether they should kill their mother but Electra was determined to do it because she was the one to blame for their father’s death. The three men leave, and Electra bemoans her lost youth, spent in mourning for her slain father. Electra tells him all about her hard life and she tells him that she doesn’t know where her brother is and how she is married for a peasant who was way below her on the social scale. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. Ezra’s beautiful wife, Christine, is having an affair with a clipper ship captain, Adam Brant. Orestes carries the corpse of Aegisthus back to the cottage, where it... Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this Electra study guide and get instant access to the following: You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and 300,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. Complete summary of Euripides' Electra. Electra is devastated, exclaiming that if Orestes is dead, she might as well be dead too. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “Electra” by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal. Aegisthus begs Orestes for a word of defense, but Electra cuts him off, telling Orestes to kill Aegisthus right away and leave his body for “the dogs and birds.” Orestes leads Aegisthus into the castle, to the exact place where Aegisthus killed Agamemnon many years before. According to Electra, it doesn’t matter if justice was on Clytemnestra’s side, because there cannot be a “more shameful” act than murder. As soon as Clytemnestra has finished praying, the Old Man enters in the character of a Phocian, bearing a false account of Orestes's death. Chrysothemis then explains her purpose in carrying funeral offerings. Because she refuses to embrace the new king and because she won't forgive her mother for murdering her father, she's abused on a regular basis by the royal couple. First, Sophocles contrasts both Electra and Antigone with a sister (Chrysothemis and Ismene, respectively) who is willing to compromise in order to live in peace. The old slave will go to the palace, Orestes says, because the old slave’s age will make him unrecognizable, and tell the people there that Orestes has been killed in a chariot accident during the Pythian Games. Electra opens in Mycenae, in Ancient Greece. In return, the goddess would give enough wind for the Greeks to sail to Troy. However, Electra tells her sister that Orestes is dead, and whoever put fresh offerings on Agamemnon’s grave must have done so in memory of Orestes. He tells Electra that he saw a piece of curly hair while he was passing by Agamemnon’s grave and that it could be the hair of her brother. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Electra remains outside the palace, wailing, and Chrysothemis excitedly runs back to her. Electra's grief is immediately replaced with joy, and she is in the middle of celebrating when the Old Man emerges from within the palace and hurries Orestes inside to kill Clytemnestra. It is believed he won four or five times at the drama festivals, first time with the lost drama “The Daughters of Pelizaeus”, in 484. Electra sends her husband to bring the relative who took Orestes away from Argos. She begins to rejoice but he tells her it is not yet time to celebrate. In the fourth act, a scream far away was heard. Clytemnestra maintains that it was a just murder, done as revenge for Agamemnon's sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia. Chrysothemis despises Clytemnestra and Aegisthus too, but angering them with public lamentations for Agamemnon does more harm than good. Electra remains outside, watching for Aegisthus so that he might not return unobserved. In the first act, Electra’s husband has a monolog about Electra’s innocence, her father’s death, and the misfortunate faith. Electra and Orestes were shedding blood for blood because of their mother’s sins but still everything their mother had put them through isn’t a fair enough motive to kill. Book Summary. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Orestes orders Aegisthus inside so that he might kill him in the exact spot where, years before, Aegisthus killed Agamemnon. Several problems are being shown in this tragedy. She says that she is looking out for Aegisthus to arrive so that he does not catch them by surprise. Orestes, the young son of Agamemnon, is sent by a relative to Phocis before Aegisthus can destroy him. “I can look after everything here,” Electra says, and the men slip quietly into the palace. © 2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. He tells how he doesn’t want to have children with Electra because he is scared of her brother and well aware of the fact that Clytemnestra gave him Electra’s hand in marriage just so she wouldn’t marry someone who could avenge her father’s death. Euripides equalizes them with humans, entering monologs in his dramas and uses the common language without adding irrelevant figures and descriptions. Electra Summary. Considering his private life and the date of birth,a lot of information are disputable. © 2020 Shmoop University Inc | All Rights Reserved | Privacy | Legal. Orestes, having successfully killed his mother, returns to Electra to tell her the news, but he hurries back inside as they see Aegisthus approaching. So they do. Exact number remains unknown because for some of them authorship isn’t determined. Suddenly, Clytemnestra approaches on her way to give offerings to the gods and scolds Electra for her misbehavior. Electra opens in Mycenae, in Ancient Greece. The Greek tragedy “Electra” was written by Euripides in 410 B.C. Electra claims that Agamemnon killed a stag in Artemis’s “sacred grove” and boasted unwisely, and so he had to sacrifice Iphigenia to appease the goddess. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. She was the sister of Iphigenia and Chrysothemis, as well as Orestes, with whom they planned the murder of their mother and her lover Aegisthus, seeking revenge for the murder of their father.. She has devoted her youth to the memory of her father and has planned her vengeance for nearly a decade. Orestes has a plan: before traveling to Mycenae, he visited the Delphic oracle, who spoke the words of Apollo. We have the moral doubts regarding Orestes and Electra’s revenge. Electra, alone on stage, sings a monody of grief. He told her that her brother was alive and that he is getting ready to get revenge. Electra tells all about the hatred she feels for her mother Clytemnestra for killing her father Agamemnon and remarrying. Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia in order to get his ships home from the Trojan War. One day, after Electra and the peasant go out to do the day’s work, Orestes comes in disguise with his best friend, Pylades, to the farm to seek Electra. He leaves Athens 403. Although Sophocles changes many of the details within the play, Sophocles follows... eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Even as Orestes explains his plan to the Paedagogus, intending also to lay an offering at Agamemnon’s grave, Electra, wailing, emerges from the palace. Nevertheless, Electra’s cries of joy are as chilling as they are deserved. Before she starts sharpening her sword, Orestes shows up with his friend, Pylades. The scepter grew branches from which leaves grew and overshadowed the land. They hear her singing a lament for her fate and for the death of her father. Aegisthus, meanwhile, offers a reward for the death of Orestes. Electra, however, is having none of it. He was murdered by Electra's mother, Clytemnestra, and Clytemnestra's lover, Aegisthus, when Agamemnon returned after many years fighting in a foreign land. Have mercy on your mother!” Clytemnestra cries from inside the palace, and Electra yells back, urging Orestes to strike Clytemnestra again. Electra, Elektra, or The Electra (Ancient Greek: ΗΛΕΚΤΡΑ, Ēlektra) is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles.Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) and the Oedipus at Colonus (401 BC) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Orestes, visibly affected by the sight of his sister's suffering, reveals himself to her, displaying their father's ring as proof of his identity. Clytemnestra’s and Electra’s talk leads up to Agamemnon. The chorus, which is comprised of the virgins of the palace, attempt to console Electra, but Electra, bemoaning the oppression she suffers at her mother's hands, her deep sorrow at her father's death, and her longing for Orestes' return, proves inconsolable. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Electra is widely considered to be Sophocles's best character drama due to the thoroughness of its examination of the morals and motives of Electra herself. nightingale and that she will never stop weeping with sorrow. Orestes, Pylades, and the old slave exit the palace with blood on their hands, and Orestes tells Electra that “all is well” inside the palace. She chastises Electra for mourning in the streets, and the two have an argument about Agamemnon's murder. When Orestes becomes a man, he, the Paedagogus, and Orestes’ friend Pylades return to avenge the murder. Oppressed with sorrow, she remains unbedded (a-lectra), a virgin obsessed with vengeance against her adulterous mother and Aegisthus. General Ezra Mannon is due back home soon, as is his son Orin, who fought in the Union army. The plot of “Electra” links to this one. "The Secret Garden" is one of the most popular children's novels written by Frances Hodgson … [more] about The Secret Garden, Dostoyevsky's last novel was "The Brothers Karamazov", it was written over a period of a year … [more] about The Brothers Karamazov, The Grimm brothers are the authors of many fairy tales that are well known to this day. Your email address will not be published. Sophocles' Electra was composed about 40 years or so after Aeschylus' Libation Bearers first appeared in 458 BCE.
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