Not Just How, But Where

First off, I'd like to say that I couldn't stand Electra.  Not the play, the character, and not because of her drama, but because of her attachment to grief and revenge.  I have been severely wronged in my life, but to hold on to that pain and anguish and grief would be to hold on to the past.  And, as seen in the play, once she fulfilled her plan of taking revenge, she had nothing to live for.  I, personally, have chosen to live a life focused on forgiveness, optimism, and making the changed I can make in my life to improve it.  I feel like Electra could take that advice.

Her delivery of her grief was on par, as she was as dramatic as she could have been in her wild and "loud" hand gestures, defensive and indignant body language, and exasperated and offended tone.  The other characters also utilized such mechanisms of speech and performance to present their opinions, emotions, or stories.  As Chandler mentioned, the use of the drums during ominous or suspenseful portions of the script helped set a beat and rhythm for the delivery of lines.  It was a fascinating way to incorporate music to the point of adding effect, but not too much to drown out the spectacular stage skills of these actors and the tragedy being presented.

In addition to how these actors and actresses spoke, wailed, moved, and behaved, I wonder if the visual setting of where the events took place can be included in the canon of delivery.  I found interesting symbolism from the pillars and construction set-ups where the dialogue took place: metal bars as a scaffold to assemble upon, yet pieces of pillars broken and spray-painted strewn across the ground.  The setting of the scenes was in a constant push and pull of building and tearing down, a parallel to the family ties being strengthened or weakened within this family as arguments rage, siblings are reunited, and lethal revenge is taken.  It seems that the director knew the setting would have a rhetorical effect on the delivery of this play and sought to take full advantage of it.

Mobs and civilization..its all in the Mind

The play is irrational in the respect that there is no way that many people would be able to be completely brainwashed into getting rid of all of their inhibitions. Even in a culture where the gods are seen as real this play would seem irrational. However, this was probably Euripides using satire to establish a point about mob mentality and good old fashioned peer pressure.



Peer Pressure and Inhibitions

The fact that Euripides tells the story from the view of someone not overcome by Dionysus helps give the play a little more realism. He could have written it so that the people trying to stop Bacchus looked crazy and all of the irrational people looked sane. While this would add an interesting dynamic to the play, it would compromise what little realism the play has because the readers and watchers of the play probably hadn't sworn their lives over to the god of wine and care-free feelings so they would realize that the bakkhai were still acting insane.

The change in the settings of the play, the fact that the followers of Dionysus go out of the city into the wilderness, helps provide framework for the play and even supplies a theme or moral for the story. In the beginning of the class we talked about what makes a civilization. I think that Euripides is arguing in this play that inhibitions and self-control are also necessary for civilized life because they distinguish humans from animals.

I am taking a psychology class this semester and we are currently talking about the brain and the specific parts that control different aspects of our human lives. One part of the brain is in charge of our personality and self-control. It was interesting to listen to the stories of people who have injured this part of their brains, resulting in a more aggressive personality and increased sexual drive, and then reading this play which focuses on the same changes but with a supernatural cause instead of a physical one. The fact that Euripides grouped these two symptoms, violence and sexuality, without a knowledge of the specialized sections of the brain, is very impressive and tells us a little more about human nature.