Can't live with them...

When Electra and her mother were bickering back and forth, I couldn't help but think about how my mother and I are similar to them. Fortunately my mother and I don't fight about anything as serious as death, but we believe so firmly in our arguments that they can sometimes be drawn out for days... Yet my mother usually wins being the one with the authority in the situation. Like my mother and I, both Electra and Clytemnestra were very powerful rhetorical speakers and had very well thought out arguments, but all the rhetoric in the world couldn't change either of their minds.


Electra is a character that clung to justice and the great mourning for her father eventually turned to hostility when she discovered Orestes was dead (at least we thought). Clytemnestra tried to cover the haunting feeling of murdering her husband Agamemnon with her great wealth and rank, but in the end it wasn't as powerful as Electra's motivations. Electra states from the get go that she will never give up on justice until it is served, and most of the play is spent with her trying to judicially convince other characters, with a thick layer of pathos, how horrible her mother is and to join her side; But with her mother being in such high power she wasn't a match for Clytemnestra or her step-father Aegisthus.

 Even though her mother was the Queen and thought she could get away with whatever she wanted because she was in a position of authority, Electra eventually won the fight. What was most interesting to me was how Electra threw herself over her mother's body at the end of the play, which proved to me even though her motives seemed justifiable, she realized that getting rid of her mother would never really satisfy the real issues she deals with internally. This further proves to me that revenge will never be the answer.