Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The Tragedy of the Tragedy


            I hate Greek drama.  It is dark, pessimistic, and focuses on the worst pieces of humankind without offering hope that they can be resolved.  That being said, attending the performance of Electra helped me grasp and appreciate more fully Sophocles' great skill as a writer.  Like Kapri Beus, I realized that Electra represented pathos and Clytemnestra, logos.  They always disagreed because arguments that they employed and responded to were fundamentally different from each other.  Orestes represented ethos.  Everything he did, he did simply because of who he was, the son of Agamemnon.  Because of the appeals they represented, I disagreed with the delivery of both Electra and Clytemnestra.  Electra was ironically portrayed as the more down-to-earth sister while Clytemnestra was a bit more whimsical.  When reading the play, I pictured them  more on an equal footing, which sent a completely different message.

            I also found it interesting that each of the children of Agamemnon mirrored the branches of oratory:  Electra was immersed in the past and made judicial claims about her mother's injustice, Clytemnestra was focused on the needs of the present and her epideictic blame of Electra for deliberately running afoul of Aegisthus and Chrysothemes, and Orestes deliberated about the advantageousness of his plans to fake his own death.


            While the tragedy of a brother and sister who murder their mother and stepfather and, through their act of vengeance, become them, was too dark for my taste, I can't think of a better representation of what we have learned so far in this class.  Sophocles truly had remarkable talent.  However, referring specifically to the arts, President Packer once employed the following quote, "There are many who struggle and climb and finally reach the top of the ladder, only to find that it is leaning against the wrong wall."  In that spirit, I wish that Sophocles had used his impressive talent to bring people closer to life, truth, and happiness instead of portraying the darkness and depravity of some people's lives.  May we learn from his mistake that his tragedy may not become ours.

"Leptis Theater," no changes made, by David Stanley, "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode"

4 comments:

  1. I wonder if Sophocles wasn't showing the darkness for the very purpose of bringing people "closer to life, truth and happiness". Just as we can learn a lot from the pride cycle in the Book of Mormon, seeing fatal flaws in others can make it easier for us to see them in ourselves.

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  2. I really appreciated your comments on how the siblings mirrored the three different branches of oratory. Sophocles really did emphasize a particular branch in each of them, which is really quite interesting. And going off of Spencer's comments above, I think that he may be right with regards to Sophocles' intentions. Perhaps he was trying to illustrate the negative effects that come from hatred and grudges, in order to encourage viewers to NOT live that way.

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  3. I thought about that, but the difference is that the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to show people how to turn to Christ. Telling people that the world is dark doesn't help them unless they also have hope that they can conquer the darkness.

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  4. Although gruesome this greek drama also helps us remember the importance of life because you can see how much Electra cared for her father and her brother.

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