Electra
Elektra
Grief endured too long without action curdles into an obsession that consumes the mourner, but Electra's fierce refusal to move past her father's murder is also what finally drives Orestes to avenge it.
- grief hardened into obsession
- matricide with minimal moral hesitation
- Electra as psychological center of the play
- comparison with Aeschylus's and Euripides's versions
- waiting and delayed vengeance
Sophocles's Electra dramatizes the years-long grief and fury of Agamemnon's daughter, who has lived under her mother Clytemnestra's rule mourning her murdered father and waiting for her exiled brother Orestes to return and avenge him. When a false report of Orestes's death arrives, Electra's despair deepens until Orestes reveals himself alive and the two together kill Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, a matricide the play treats with less moral hesitation than either Aeschylus's or Euripides's versions of the same myth. Sophocles concentrates the drama almost entirely on Electra's psychology, her raw, unrelenting grief and hatred, making her rather than Orestes the play's true center and offering a study of mourning stretched to its breaking point.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…