Antigone / Oedipus the King / Electra, Sophocles, Edith Hall (Editor), H.D.F. Kitto (Translator)

This volume contains three masterpieces by the Greek playwright Sophocles, widely regarded since antiquity as the greatest of all the tragic poets.

The vivid translations, which combine elegance and modernity, are remarkable for their lucidity and accuracy, and are equally suitable for reading for pleasure, study, or theatrical performance.

The selection of Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Electra not only offers the reader the most influential and famous of Sophocles' works, it also presents in one volume the two plays dominated by a female heroic figure, and the experience of the two great dynasties featured in Greek tragedy--the houses of Oedipus and Agamemnon.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «ادیپوس شاه اودیپوس در کولونوس، آنتیگون»؛ «آن‍ت‍ی‍گ‍ن‌»؛ «‏‫آنتیگنه»؛ «تراژدی آنتیگونه»؛ «نمایشنامه آنتیگون یا آنتیگونه»؛ اثر: سوفوکل؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان یونان - سده5پیش از میلاد؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه آگوست سال1999میلادی

عنوان: آنتیگونه؛ سوفکلس؛ ترجمه نجف دریابندری؛ تهران، آگاه، سال1355؛ در69ص؛ ویرایش دیگر: آگه؛ سال1393؛ در147ص؛ شابک9789643292775؛ چاپ سیزدهم سال1400؛

عنوان: اودی‍پ‍وس‌ ش‍اه‌ اودی‍پ‍وس‌ در ک‍ول‍ون‍وس‌ آن‍ت‍ی‌گ‍ون‌؛ از س‍وف‍وک‍ل‌؛ مترجم: محمد سعیدی؛ سال1334؛ در196ص؛ چاپ چهارم علمی فرهنگی سال1386؛در شانزده و170ص؛ شابک9789644455704؛ چاپ پنجم سال1389؛ چاپ ششم سال1394؛

عنوان: تراژدی آنتیگونه؛ اثر سوفوکلس؛ ترجمه مقابله‌ای انگلیسی - فارسی رخشنده نبی‌زاده‌؛ رشت، دهسرا، سال1392؛ در240ص؛ شابک9789641972891؛

نمایشنامه آنتیگون یا آنتیگونه را بزرگواران سرکار خانم «مریم داودی»، و جناب آقای «ابوالفضل حاجی علیزاده» نیز در152ص، ترجمه و در انتشارات بدیهه در سال1381هجری خورشیدی، با شابک9646701388؛ منتشر کرده اند

عنوان: ‏‫آنتیگنه؛ نویسنده سوفوکلس؛ مترجم محدثه وحیدی‌مهر؛ شیراز، ایلاف، سال1388؛ در62ص؛ شابک9789648809831؛

داستان «آنتیگون» را لابد بیشتر خوانشگران میدانند، «آنتیگون»، در اسطوره‌ های «یونان»، دختر «ادیپ» و «یوکاسته» است؛ برادرانش «پولونیکس» و «اتئوکلس»، در جنگ مخالفان هفتگانه ی شهر «تب»، هم‌دیگر را کشتند، پادشاه «تب» تدفین «پولونیکس» را، به جرم خیانت قدغن کردند؛ «آنتیگون» از آن فرمان سرپیچی می‌کند، و می‌گوید: «از قلب خویش فرمان می‌برد»؛ او برادر را به خاک می‌سپارد، و به دستور «کرئون» دائی خویش و پادشاه «تب»، زنده در گور می‌شود

تاریخ 12/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 16/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Review based on Antigone and Oedipus the King

I thought that this was a good story overall but some of the characters got annoying overtime. Antigone was portrayed very well but she was very headstrong and refused to listen to others just like Creon.

Excuse me but I have been absolutely blown away by these plays. I did not expect to be. I am in shock.

Antigone - Whose tragedy is it anyway as Creon seems to spend almost all the play on stage and loses his wife and son (and another son before the play starts). Antigone upholds patriarchy by insisting on upholding divine laws and burying her brother and does so by betraying... the senior male in the family Creon. Whose indecisiveness causes his own tragedies.

Oedipus - The most famous story of road rage ever. Totally implausible but absolutely wonderful. Tom Lehrer get out of my head.

Electra - The one I was least looking forward to but I enjoyed it so much. Electra must have been so young when her father went away and she does not understand Clytemnestra at all. Her sister was sacrificed by her father, her father caused the rupture with Achilles portrayed in the Iliad by his behaviour and he even brought a Trojan princess home with him, and he utterly failed in his role as husband and protector and family head. Electra is not capable of seeing her parents in anything other than black and white terms. She is a very strong character and her strength has taken the form of excessive grief and an outspoken desire for vengeance. It is impossible to like her. It is impossible to pity her. But you will be compelled to be fascinated by her. Orestes was a plot-device in comparison, existing only to complete the actual deed of killing his mother and her second husband. Although this is the point at which the play ends there are hints that the children of Clytemnestra's second marriage are duty-bound to take revenge and Electra could see that what goes around comes around.

I can't pick a favourite. It would be like picking a favourite child (wait a second, I don't have any children...) What a wonderful and thought-provoking reading experience this was.

This translator makes some deletions with which I don't particularly agree, but his style flows well.

i had to read this for school but there’s just something about greek tragedy’s that i love.

It isn't a book I would read again but a book that I can enjoy once. Obviously it is a classic so I respect it but I don't enjoy it.

Oedipus the King underlines a vast assortment of motifs; a great read that illustrates numerous morals within our own lives.

"You cannot move me. I will know the truth."

The truth bubbles up slowly, like dross atop molten metal. It burns the hands dipped in to draw off the imperfections. It's much easier to discard the disagreeable, to insult the wise when their words chafe against your oversized ego. Even more than a diviner, poor Tiresias absorbs so much punishment. Only Orestes remains open to correction, and his dark revenge succeeds as a result: "You then shall hear my plan, and as you listen / Give it your sharp attention, to amend / Whatever seems amiss."

Oedipus knows the truth from the start, but denies it. The terrifying thing isn't the particular doom the gods predict, but that the gods are true. Freud and others miss the point, being enamored at the gimmicky violence, the incest. But the real terror slumbers deeper. It hides among the lines of dialogue, eating up delayed action like manflesh. It's so tempting to "live at random, live as best one can," as Oedipus' wife suggests. Hers is a passive attempt to escape from the truth, while Oedipus' is active. He runs away from fate, thinking he can avoid the Oracle's warning by leaving his adopted hometown. But lies that were told to protect him only compound his suffering.

Cornered, Oedipus tries to delay the truth. He's not stupid, he asks "How can I believe this with no proof?" He trusts in himself; after all, he was the one who banished the Sphinx! It's mentioned time and again, a crutch he allows himself, the proof of his superior intellect and his favor with the gods. But wit is not the same as wisdom, as he painfully learns.

And learning is pain. Often it's excruciating. The overwhelming pain of knowledge leads many characters to suicide in these plays. Iocasta hangs herself beside "The bed where she had borne a double brood, / Husband from husband, children from a child." The dramatic irony is so tightly wound it can't help but explode upon impact. But curiously, Oedipus proves himself the biggest coward of these three plays. He doesn't kill himself, instead "only" blinding himself. When he finally sees this truth, there is no more need of sight. He wishes he could deafen himself, could become completely insensate. Knowledge, though so desperately sought, renders inactive once it's achieved. We in the postmodern age can deeply relate. But for us, the supposed knowledge is that there are no gods, no saviors, no fate, no rules. Agoraphobia is our plague. For Oedipus, the opposite: the gods are true, everything is fated before our times, there is no freedom.

Oedipus, like us, attempts a grammatical escape:

You said that he reported it was brigands
Who killed the King. If he still speaks of 'men',
It was not I; a single man, and 'men',
Are not the same. But if he says it was
A traveller journeying alone, why then,
The burden of the guilt must fall on me.

Fear of the truth while ostensibly chasing the truth. It makes the soul ugly, makes the doer insult honest friends, transforms wit into savage cruelty: "You live in darkness; you can do no harm / To me or any man who has his eyes." But Oedipus' folly is that none have eyes; those with eyes to see are the more misguided, ironically, for they think they see the world. Tiresias' entrance is marked by "Ah! what a burden knowledge is, when knowledge / Can be of no avail!" His blindness resulted from compounded knowledge, a gradual filling up of the mind so that the eyes clouded over. Oedipus' revelation is too sudden for sight to survive, too traumatic. Knowledge is a burden, is traumatic, is something which causes slowness in action, rather than speed of action. Oedipus' hyperactivity turned into wrathful resentment the moment he realized the truth; he didn't acknowledge that truth until he had no other choice. The entire play is the building up of pressure, the kettle steaming on the stovetop with no one brave enough to remove it.

Many of us are stuck in that same dread limbo that Oedipus roils in throughout the play: "Strange, disturbing, what the wise / Prophet has said. What can he mean? / Niether can I believe, nor can I disbelieve; / I do not know what to say." We feel permanently stuck in this liminal state, our premonitions preventing sleep, but not enough evidence to clearly damn us. We squint at the creature in the dark bedroom corner, unsure if it's clothes on a hanger or something worse. Usually we're too tired to turn on the light or to hang up the clothes, so we wallow in fear. Oedipus was lucky enough to be damned outright, to get the blinding over with. We, however, are stuck in the entryway, not able to enter fully, nor able to escape. We knock and knock, wishing we could take off our shoes.

The ending is most confusing, with Oedipus still alive, too cowardly to die in his shame, too shamed to look upon the sun. His daughters (who are also his sisters) are brought out. They remain silent at the horror, propping him up. His blood-black beard must still be wet, complicating their embraces, staining the innocent with the sins of their forefather, their brother. The last lines are as follows:

CREON. Ah no! When I
Am ignorant, I do not speak.

OEDIPUS. Then lead me in; I say no more.

CREON. Release the children then, and come.

OEDIPUS. What? Take these children from me? No!

CREON. Seek not to have your way in all things:
Where you had your way before,
Your mastery broke before the end.

Creon's refusal to speak when ignorant is a sort of wisdom Oedipus may have benefited from. But after that, things tangle. Why are they bringing Oedipus indoors, when he has banished himself from the city? Why does he have to let go of his children, his siblings, his only family left? Is everything he does tainted, every act, every touch, so that no matter what he wants, is damned? And where are his sons, the ones who would take over as king in his wake?

Antigone answers that question. They have killed each other while striving to be king. Creon, suddenly thrust into leadership, loses the wisdom he had in the previous play. The distance he had had proved to be the source of his wisdom, and now on the throne, he displays the same short-sighted rage as his dead brother-in-law Oedipus. In the aftermath of the senseless fratricide of Oedipus' two sons, Creon denounces one and makes a hagiography for the other. The distinction is completely arbitrary, completely artificial. Oedipus' daughter Antigone detects this falsehood. She, seeing the truth of the gods, their fateful power on display in her own father's life, openly disregards Creon's unjust denouncement of her brother. Antigone stands on her principles, a true role model:

Nor could I think that decree of yours---
A man---could override the laws of Heaven
Unwritten and unchanging. Not of today
Or yesterday is their authority;
They are eternal; no man saw their birth.
Was I to stand before the gods' tribunal
For disobeying them, because I feared
A man? I knew that I should have to die,
Even without your edict; if I die
Before my time, why then, I count it gain

Antigone displays the bravery of the Christian Martyrs. She knows she has done what is right; she has visited the tomb of a dead man wrongfully accused, a dead man guarded by soldiers. The parallels are curious. She likewise defies peer pressure, whether man-made laws or threats of shame: "Have you no shame, not to conform with others?" Her sister attempts a middle ground, which proves cowardice. To her, Antigone pronounces "I love not those who love in words alone." The sisters in Electra face a similar dilemma, where one acts on her words, but the other hides behind her words.

Haemon, Creon's son, interposes for Antigone, warning Creon similarly to how Creon warned Oedipus. The generations roll on, but the same folly perpetuates itself. The worst danger proves to not be overmuch knowledge, but the knowledge of overmuch knowledge; i.e. the pride that comes with wisdom, a pride which blinds and makes one worse than an ignoramus:

The man
Who thinks that he alone is wise, that he
Is best in speech or counsel, such a man
Brought to the proof is found but emptiness.
There's no disgrace, even if one is wise,
In learning more, and knowing when to yield.

Strangely, wisdom works like the sort of optical illusion which only shows up if you don't look directly at it. Too-direct an approach kills the truth. Likewise, too-direct leadership destroys the government:

CREON. Am I to rule for them, not for myself?

HAEMON. That is not government, but tyranny.

...

CREON. Villain! Do you oppose your father's will?

HAEMON. Only because you are opposing Justice.

CREON. When I regard my own prerogative?

HAEMON. Opposing God's, you disregard your own.

Wisdom proves something so difficult because of the impossibility of explicitly stating it. And, like for Oedipus, once it is learned it is too late. The bodies have already been laid out, the sins have already been revenged. Justice proves as swift as the fates are inescapable. Tiresias and his blind wisdom hobble on stage only long enough to accuse Creon of his folly, and he walks off stage before he can be insulted further. He hauntingly asks himself "Does any man reflect, does any know..." He asks this rhetorically, for he knows no men reflect, none know, otherwise his slow, blind wisdom would not be needed.

Electra, the final play of the book, is much louder. The title character laments, insults, plans, and rejoices, all at maximum volume. Her loudness almost gives her away, but her revenge is just. Or is it? She uses the following to condemn her mother's murder of her father (Agamemnon), but turns it around to justify her revenge against the same mother (condemning her in a different sense):

Be careful; if you set
This up for law, Blood in return for blood,
You may repent it; you would be the first
To die, if you were given your deserts.

As Christ knew, "an eye for an eye" threatens to spiral out of control, creating an recursive revenge loop. Someone must be the first to break the cycle. Electra and her brother Orestes decidedly continue the cycle.

So why are they not stopped by the gods? Is Sophocles implicitly supporting this revenge, while only criticizing it in language? In a parallel to the denunciation in Antigone, Electra rants at her sister: "You hate them, so you tell me: / Your tongue may hate them; what you do supports / Our father's enemies and murderers." Perhaps Sophocles couldn't bring himself to the same conclusion Christ reached; to love one's enemies? That's too revolutionary, too un-Greek.

This play is probably the worst of the three, in several senses: it's the least gripping, has the most excessive lamentation (Oedipus has very little but it's very effective), and its morality is the most dubious. Sophocles of course gets you in a wrathful mood, so you grimly cheer on the murders at the end, but a higher part of yourself questions that. Should I be jeering, cheering them on? Is this deception and matricide merely a pretense to perpetuate chaos?

Orestes proves himself a sort of anti-Christ, leaving the empty tomb, coming "back from the dead" (dispelling the rumors of his death, which he himself propagated), only to bring vengeance and secure his own earthly kingdom. His kingdom is furthered by subtrifuge, by artifice: "This is Orestes only by a fiction. // ...It is Orestes!---dead, by artifice, / And by that artifice restored to us." The urn which supposedly holds his ashes is a decoy, a fake, a prop in this play-within-a-play which he is re-writing, which he is directing. Electra, the ad-hoc executive producer, goads his darker side on. You hear their mother's death off stage. She takes a long time to die. Even just reading this, it feels unsettling. You literally hear them "turn their laughter into silence." This contrasts sharply with Electra's loud wailing, creates a haunting void. The play ends silently, with the last murder occurring off stage, after the final line. Electra has delayed her satisfaction, but now she smiles a grim, blood-splattered smile. "There will / Be time enough to smile when we have conquered." But where does this conquering end? Will she turn on Orestes if things go south? What of the guards who certainly will come running to the sound of these murders? Where does the bloodshed end?

The "Tutor" cries out, like the ground receiving Abel's blood: "You reckless fools! ... Are you demented?" But he cries out to chastise them for being too loud, not for their bloodthirsty plan. At the end, Electra silences Aegisthus, the regicide (now become a victim of regicide himself); her only weapon proves to be her language, and she uses it (literally, to fill the air so no one else can speak) to silence others. One can imagine the sound of birds taking over after the characters walk off stage; they were originally mentioned on the first page, but now, probably in the heat of the afternoon, they're getting settled in the branches, calming down for a siesta, for a nap, for a return to silence. But, as you look up from the book, you realize it's been silent this whole time, it's been an artifice, "Orestes only by a fiction." But the terror was real, the wisdom was real, and the knowledge... it's what we don't want to be true, but know to be true. Will you open your eyes, or close them?

they lowkey all just killed themselves. epic

n  4.25/5 Starsn


These were all awesome!


I've read Antigone and Oedipus the King before, but I loved revisiting them again, and have them still be as good as I once remembered back in school. I never read Electra before, so I was hesitant, but still excited to get into it. And thank the gods I did because it was better than I expected!

My favourite of the plays is probably Oedipus the King. It has the most exciting plot, and biggest plot-twist out of any of them. Super engaging! (albeit the twist is gross and messed up).

Electra was my next favourite. Electra was such a compelling character, and she had a real complicated relationship with her sister that I loved witnessing as the plot grew. And it also has a (sort of) happy ending! We never see those!

Antigone is still absolutely great! I think Antigone might be one of my favourite characters. The plot of the play isn't my absolute fave, nor is it too exciting, but we do get some great interactions with Creon, Antigone, and Ismene.

Definitely go and check out these plays. The Oxford World's Classics edition was so accessible! Highly recommend.

Complex: What Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Electra Can Teach Us about Ourselves and Our Wars by Sera Arcaro, June 2010

I love the story of Oedipus, although Oedipus himself is not a particularly likeable character. He is egotistical: When confronted with the suffering of his subjects at the beginning of the play he declares, “I know how cruelly you suffer; yet, though sick, not one of you suffers a sickness half as great as mine. Yours is a single pain; each man of you feels but his own. My heart is heavy with the city’s pain, my own, and yours together” (50). He is pompous in his empathy and selfish in his solution. When he accepts the charge of finding the former king’s murderers in order to end the blight, he readily admits, “The man who murdered him might make the same attempt on me; and so, avenging him I shall protect myself” (53).

He is also a braggart: When he first appears in response to the lamentations he says, “I myself am come who fame is known to all—I, Oedipius” (49). In twelve words he refers to himself four times. There is a bit of dramatic irony here as well, since the audience knows the real reason for his lasting infamy. But his hamartia is really shown when he doubts Teiresias’ prophetic abilities and brags about his own cleverness: “When the Sphinx chanted her music here, why did not you speak out and save the city? …You were no prophet then; your birds, your voice from Heaven, were dumb. But I, who came by chance, I, knowing nothing, put the Sphinx to flight, thanks to my wit—no thanks to divination!” (61). As Albert Camus comments, his emphasis on man’s ability to solve problems without the help of the gods reflects the paradigm shift occurring in Athens at the time: a transition from “a sacred society [to:] a society built by man.” However, even atheists such as myself might still feel that Oedipus’ harangue against Teiresias is a bit overdone.

Oedipus is also unlikable because his anger so quickly turns to violence: When he is fleeing Thebes, he has a right-of-way skirmish with another carriage, and in a fit of road rage his kills his father and his father’s entourage (although he does not know their identity as such), ending his account of the incident with the unapologetic statement, “I killed them all” (75). Later on his journey to self-discovery, an elderly Theban shepherd refuses to answer Oedipus’ questions. Oedipus suggests torturing the answer out of him: “Here, someone, quickly! Twist this fellow’s arms!”(88). A moment later he threatens, “Die you shall, unless you speak the truth” (88).

He is also quick to accuse others: When the blind seer, Tieresias, tells him he is the cause of the plague, he refuses to listen and instead accuses Tieresias of being a crony of his brother-in-law Creon, whom he suddenly thinks is trying to overthrow him. He also jumps to conclusions when his wife, trying to protect him from the true knowledge of his birth and relationship to her, pleads “Seek no more! ….O may you never learn what man you are!” (85). Oedipus misunderstands and thinks she is afraid of learning that he is of lowly birth. Oedipus declares “My birth, however humble, I am resolved to find. But [Jocasta:], perhaps, is proud, as women will be; is ashamed of my low birth. But I do rate myself the child of Fortune, giver of all good, and I shall not be put to shame” (85). Again, dramatic irony is employed here, because we know that he is the child of his wife, which is a great misfortune.

Thanks to Freud, most people associate Oedipus with a son desiring to sleep with his mother. However, Oedipus ends up sleeping with his mother precisely because he is trying to avoid sleeping with his mother. He doesn’t know his adoptive parents are not his biological parents, so when an oracle tells him the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother, he immediately runs away from Corinth so that he doesn’t murder Polybus and sleep with Merope. It is in fleeing Corinth that he runs into his father at the place where three roads meet, slays him, then proceeds to Thebes where he solves the Sphynx’s riddle and wins marriage with the queen (his mother) as his reward. In running from the prophecy, he runs straight into it.

If you focus only on the murderous, incestuous parts, it would be easy to dismiss this story as merely an ancient Greek tragedy set in the days before it was regarded as important to let children know they are adopted and when gods controlled your fate. But I think Oedipus’s real problem was not sexual in nature, as Freud’s co-opting of the name would have us believe. His real problem was that he failed to see that he was the cause of the problem because he was so quick to accuse and blame everyone else. In this sense, we all have an Oedipus complex.

In the beginning, Oedipus sends Creon to Apollo to find out the cause of the plague, and Creon returns with this message: “There is pollution here in our midst, long-standing” (51) because the murderer of king Laius has not been found. There is no way Oedipus could know that it was him, at the point. But shortly after Creon’s report, Tieresias tells Oedipus point blank that he is “the man whose crimes pollute our city” (60). As Oedipus’ insolence makes Teiresias angrier, Teiresias says, “You have your sight, and yet you cannot see where, nor with whom, you live, nor in what horror” (62).

It’s a bit cryptic, and you can’t entirely blame Oedipus for not understanding. But what we can blame him for is that he doesn’t even try. He immediately starts accusing Creon of hiring Teiresias to say this about him, in order to usurp the throne. It is only when Oedipus sees for himself that he is the cause of the pollution that he finally believes it. Of course, we’re not all failing to see that we are living in incest. But we’ve all, I’m sure, failed to see that we are the problem. We are quick to blame others, as Oedipus blames Creon and Tieresias, and this clouds his ability to understand what they are telling him.

This crops up frequently in my own life, in fairly innocuous ways. I’ll get done doing the laundry and come up one sock short, and I’ll immediately think Zac has put it in his sock drawer by mistake, or that it’s lost under his pile of clothes. I generally blame Zac, silently, for anything that goes missing because I am the neat organized one who never loses things, just like Oedipus clings to the fact that he saved Thebes from the Sphynx, so surely he couldn’t also be the one bringing ruin to the city. But I’ll find the sock behind the hamper a week or two later, where I didn’t think of looking because I was so sure someone else had lost it, not me. At a restaurant the other day, we were dividing up the check, but ended up with $10 dollars too much. I had been collecting money and making change, and I was sure someone else had put too much in. Of course, when I finally demanded a reenactment of the monetary transaction, it was revealed that I was the one who had mistakenly put in the extra ten bucks. “Hah,” I said. “I’m like Oedipus. I’m blaming others for the problem and it turns out it is me.” Oedipus is really about seeing things clearly.

Freud also co-opted Electra from Sophocles, to name the lesser-known Electra Complex: When a girl, in love with her father, wishes to kill her mother. This one is a little more aptly named at least, as Electra does seem rather obsessed with her father, Agamemnon, and openly wishes for the death of her mother, Clytemnestra, and her step-father, Aegisthus. It should be noted, though, that most of the time she is pining for her beloved brother, Orestes, to return from exile and slay her mother and step-father, who are responsible for the murder of her father. It is her brother who actually kills their mother, as retribution for the murder of their father, which seems to fly in the face of Freud’s Oedipus Complex.

Electra can also teach us a few things, but not necessarily about matricide. Rather, it is a story about longing for revenge. The chorus counters Electra’s grief by reminding her that although her father is dead, and that’s a bad thing, “he has gone to the land to which we all must go” (107). Still, Electra feeds her sorrow and lusts for retribution. She sees it as a daughter’s duty. Her mother points out that she killed Agamemnon as retribution for Agamemnon’s murder of their daughter. Electra counters that Agamemnon had to kill the daughter, as Artemis was holding their ship hostage until she received retribution for a stag that Agamemnon had killed. We see the cycle of revenge that has led to this moment, and we are given a hint of the cycle of revenge that will continue. After Orestes successfully slays his father’s murderers, we can imagine that now Aegisthus and Clytemnestra’s children will be obligated to slay Electra and Orestus as retribution for their parent’s murder. So the moral, really, is don’t kill one of Artemis’ deer, her (read as Gollum would say it) precious.

When reading Electra, you want to root for the protagonist; you want to want Lady Clytemnestra to die, as Electra’s grief is poignant and she is treated no better than a slave. As a foil, Electra’s sister is also mad about their father’s murder, but she pleads with Electra: “Why do you indulge this vain resentment? I am sure of this: Mine is as great as yours. If I could find the power, they soon would learn how much I hate them. But we are helpless; we should ride the storm with shortened sail, not show our enmity when we are impotent to do them harm” (113). While yielding one’s principles in the face of obstacles is not very noble, Electra’s obsessive and excessive longing for revenge isn’t to be emulated either.

Sophocles’ Electra ends rather abruptly, after all her whining and pining, with her gleefully hearing her mother’s last wails, followed shortly by her step-father’s demise. I don’t find it the cathartic ending promised by Greek tragedy. Electra’s cruelty as she savors their deaths is not something you can or should identify with. At the end of Oedipus, you can pity him, because for all of his faults, he was not to blame for his crimes. He was an unfortunate, albeit egotistical, plaything of the gods. They made a prophecy, and any student of Greek mythology knows that the prophecies always come true. However, Electra and Orestes were not fulfilling any pre-ordained prophecy, but rather a man-made code that calls for blood retribution. At Clytemnestra’s death, the chorus proclaims, “The cry for vengeance is at work; the dead are stirring. Those who were killed of old now drink in return the blood of those who killed them” (149). This provides comfort for Electra, but for those of us who believe the dead stay dead and are no longer sentient, we know the dead can gain no additional comfort from vengeance. In a modern, secular society, we know man-made codes can be changed and adapted to avoid fates that only vengeful gods could foist upon us.

After Clytemnestra’s death, Aegisthus returns and Orestus takes him inside the house to murder him, explaining, “Go in, and die on the same spot on which you killed my father” (152). Orestus wants Aegisthus to die in the same way his father died, without realizing that he is therefore making himself the same as the aggressor he hates. The oppressed is now becoming the oppressor. Aegisthus has children of his own, who may one day kill Orestes in the same spot that Orestus killed their father. Orestus, unlike our modern superheroes that always show restraint and stop short of murdering the villains, crosses a line and forfeits any moral superiority that he might have had.

As a country, we have done the same thing time and time again. The hypocrisies are endless: We fought the oppression of the British empire, only to oppress slaves and native Americans. We defeated Hitler while being allies with Stalin and putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps. During the cold war, the US government, led by senator McCarthy, employed many of the same tactics against its own citizens that the communists were using against theirs. In fighting the enemy, we emulated the enemy.

Similarly, in our current war on terror, we have become terrorists. We violate human rights, kill innocent civilians, squash dissent, and endorse torture. We are Electra and 9/11 is our Agamemnon. Or maybe, more comparably, we are Artemis and the WTC is our stag. We demand an excessive recompense: toppling two sovereign governments and wreaking havoc on untold numbers of non-terrorists, which touched off a cycle of revenge and violence that has no foreseeable end. While the terrorist attacks were cruel and tragic, the victims have only gone where we are all going, where numerous Americans go every day due to other causes that we do not condemn as vehemently.

In going to these extremes to fight our “enemy,” we eliminate the moral superiority that separated us from our enemy. We are Orestus—feeling quite justified stepping into Aegisthus’ position and mimicking his murder, without seeing clearly that doing so eliminates the moral distinction between “us” and “them.” Being the victim of an injustice does not make us morally superior—it is only in our response to the injustice that we can show our integrity. Like Oedipus, our national narrative is pompous and egotistical, focusing on the good we have done, to the extent that we are blind to the sins we commit. Our anger, our fear, and our sense of superiority are faulty justifications for the perpetration of violence. The problem is as Aegisthus points out shortly before he is killed: “This house of Atreus must, it seems, behold death upon death, those now and those to come” (152).