Analyse the theme of hereditary guilt in the play Agamemnon

The Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides were the last tragedies composed by Aeschylus, and were produced in 458 [B.C.], two years before his death, along with the satiric drama Proteus. The tetra-logy as a whole was called the Oresteia, a name which, whether due to Aeschylus or not, appears to have been in use at any rate as early as the time of Aristophanes. The contents of the Proteus are unknown, and its connection with the preceding tragedies obscure; but it probably dealt with the fortunes of Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, and related the story of his detention on the coast of Egypt, and his rescue by the help of Proteus, the sea-god.

The subject of the trilogy is one of those dark stories of hereditary guilt, of which the Septem (Seven Against Thebes) [supplies another] example. Atreus had sown the first seeds of woe by his murder of the children of Thyestes; and Agamemnon, later on, had sacrificed the life of his daughter, Iphigenia to his own ambition. The results are unfolded in the Oresteia. Clytemnestra, assisted by her paramour Aegisthus, murders Agamemnon, partly to conceal her adultery, partly in revenge for the loss of her daughter. The murderers are slain in turn by Orestes, who thus incurs the guilt of matricide. For this offense he is exposed to the vengeance of the Furies, who typify the workings of remorse, and by whom he is hunted from place to place, until at length he reaches Athens, where he finds release from his sufferings.

the depth of moral significance which it acquires in the hands of Aeschylus was essentially his own creation. Under his treatment it becomes one of the most solemn and impressive pictures of guilt and retribution which was ever painted by any poet. One thought inspires the whole trilogy from first to last — the thought of the crimes which have been committed in the past and of the blood which has been shed and which still cries out unceasingly for vengeance. This recollection seems to haunt the very souls of the actors in the successive tragedies. It hangs like a dark cloud over the minds of the Theban elders, damps their joy at the news of the victory, and fills them with gloomy forebodings. It forms the constant burden of those odes in the Choephori, where the chorus justifies the approaching act of retribution. It is never absent from the lips of the Furies, as they pursue Orestes with righteous chastisement.

The introduction of Cassandra, which gives occasion to the finest scene in the play, answers a double object. As an example of the insolence of Agamemnon, in bringing home his captive mistress before the very eyes of his wife, it lessens out sympathy with his misfortune, and fixes our attention on his guilt, in accordance with the moral purpose of the trilogy. At the same time the inspired utterances of the prophetess serve to recall to the minds of the audience those dark crimes of Atreus which were the primal source of the present evil. Another noticeable feature in the Agamemnon is the humorous scene which follows the murder. The sententious ineptitude of the old men, in the presence of the crisis, is one of those passages of semi-comedy with which Aeschylus occasionally relieves the tension of the feelings; and it may be compared with the speeches of the porter which precede the discovery of the murder in Macbeth, or with the bantering dialogue of the gentlemen after the death-scene in the Maid’s Tragedy.

Throughout this play the interest is transferred from persons to principles. The human element becomes of less importance, and Orestes and his fortunes sink into the background. Their place is taken by the great gods of Olympus and of Tartarus, who represent opposing ordinances. Law and Justice, typified by the Furies, demand the punishment of the matricide; while Equity, personified by Apollo and Zeus, pleads for the release of the avenger of crime. It is between these mighty combatants that the battle is waged. Guilt is set against guilt, duty against duty, and no decision seems possible. At length Mercy, under the person of Athene, decides in favor of Orestes.

Describe the importance of Chorus as depicted in Sophocles’ plays. importance of Chorus King Oedipus

Chorus, in drama and music, those who perform vocally in a group as opposed to those who perform singly. The chorus in Classical Greek drama was a group of actors who described and commented upon the main action of a play with song, dance, and recitation. Greek tragedy had its beginnings in choral performances, in which a group of 50 men danced and sang parathyroids—lyric hymns in praise of the god Dionysus. In the middle of the 6th century bc, the poet Thespis reputedly became the first true actor when he engaged in dialogue with the chorus leader. Choral performances continued to dominate the early plays until the time of Aeschylus (5th century bc), who added a second actor and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12 performers. Sophocles, who added a third actor, increased the chorus to 15 but reduced it to a mainly commercial role in most of his plays (for an example of this role as shown in the play Oedipus the King).

The distinction between the passivity of the chorus and the activity of the actors is central to the artistry of the Greek tragedies. While the tragic protagonists act out their defiance of the limits subscribed by the gods for man, the chorus expresses the fears, hopes, and judgment of the polity, the average citizens. Their judgment is the verdict of history.

The Chorus is roughly like the peanut-gallery (it’s even occasionally told to shut up). Sophocles uses this group of The bans to comment on the play’s action and to foreshadow future events. He also uses it to comment on the larger impact of the characters’ actions and to expound upon the play’s central themes. In Oedipus the King we get choral odes on everything from tyranny to the dangers of blasphemy.

Sophocles also uses the Chorus at the beginning of the play to help tell the audience the given circumstances of the play. We hear all about the terrible havoc that the plague is wreaking on Thebes. By describing the devastation in such gruesome detail, Sophocles raises the stakes for his protagonist, Oedipus. The people of Thebes are in serious trouble; Oedipus has to figure out who killed Laius fast, or he won’t have any subjects left to rule.

importance of Chorus King Oedipus

Unlike his contemporary Euripides, Sophocles was known to integrate his choruses into the action of the play. In Oedipus the King we see the Chorus constantly advising Oedipus to keep his cool. Most of the time in ancient tragedies choruses do a lot of lamenting of terrible events, but do little to stop them. Amazingly, though, the Chorus in Oedipus the King manages to convince Oedipus not to banish or execute Creon. Just imagine how much worse Oedipus would have felt if he’d killed his uncle/brother-in-law on top of his other atrocities.

The Chorus in Oedipus the King goes through a distinct character arc. They begin by being supportive of Oedipus, believing, based on his past successes, that he’s the right man to fix their woes. As Oedipus’s behavior becomes more erratic, they become uncertain and question his motives. The fact Oedipus doesn’t start lopping off heads at this point is pretty good evidence that he’s not a tyrant. In the end, the Chorus is on Oedipus’s side again and laments his horrific fate.

In musicals, the chorus, a group of players whose song and dance routines usually reflect and enhance the development of the plot, became increasingly more prominent during the 20th century. During the late Victorian era, musical comedy was characterized by thin plot, characters, and setting, the main attraction being the song and dance routines, comedy, and a line of scantily clad chorus girls. Their performances provided an extravagant bonus at the beginnings and ends of songs or special dance numbers, and they were considered the flashy sex symbols of the day. As musicals developed, however, more attention was given to integrating their various elements. In the mid-1920s, song and dance numbers began to stem more naturally from the plot, and the chorus danced more than it sang. The dancing itself soon developed from the lines of synchronized leg kicking of the early 1900s into highly sophisticated ballet and modern dance.

Like most all ancient Greek tragedians, Sophocles divides his choral odes into strophe and anti strophe. Both sections had the same number of lines and metrical pattern. In Greek, strophe means “turn,” and anti strophe means “turn back.” This makes sense when you consider the fact that, during the strophe choruses danced from right to left and during the anti strophe they did the opposite. Sophocles may have split them into two groups, so that it was as if one part of the Chorus was conversing with the other. Perhaps the qualities created by strophe and anti strophe, represent the endless, resolvable debates for which Greek tragedy is famous.

Review of Silas Marner by George Eliot

Embittered by a false accusation, disappointed in friendship and love, the weaver Silas Marner retreats into a long twilight life alone with his loom . . . and his gold. Silas hoards a treasure that kills his spirit until fate steals it from him and replaces it with a golden-haired founding child. Where she came from, who her parents were, and who really stole the gold are the secrets that permeate this moving tale of guilt and innocence. A moral allegory of the redemptive power of love, it is also a finely drawn picture of early nineteenth-century England in the days when spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses, and of a simple way of life that was soon to disappear.

The purpose of required reading assignments is to introduce students to works of writing that they would not otherwise be likely to explore. Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe(1861), written by Mary Anne Evans under the nom de plume of George Eliot, is one such work. The novel’s age and reputation for dullness may inhibit many potential readers from absorbing the book’s unique setting, literary creativity, and hopeful message, thence making Silas Marner a good choice for mandatory reading.

Eliot’s work is probably best known for its demonstration of the difference between perceived and genuine happiness. The protagonist, Silas Marner, grew up in Lantern Yard, where he was an active and respected member of a religious community. However, after being framed for a theft and refusing to admit his culpability, Marner is forced to leave Lantern Yard. He heads for the rural village of Raveled, where he becomes a solitary weaver, aloof from his neighbors and his past. With nothing else to fill his emotional hollowness, Marner begins to obsessively crave the gold that he earns from his work, and he counts it every night after dark.

When the gold is stolen, Marner’s perceived emotional fulfillment collapses, and his actual internal barrenness is once again exposed. Marner might have remained in this state for the rest of his life was it not for a child that appeared on his hearth. By adopting the young girl, Marner connected to his neighbors, regained his sense of religious faith and purpose, and restored the genuine happiness that he had not felt since his days at Lantern Yard. Thus, Eliot’s novel leaves readers with a spirit of hope, by exhorting them to seek out those aspects of life that truly matter and by reminding them that it is never too late to change and grow.

In addition to an inspiring message, Silas Marner offers readers fascinating insights into the society of England in the early 1800s. The novel portrays the superstitions and beliefs of the rustic lower class, such as widespread distrust of foreigners, apprehension over the influence of the devil, and unshakable faith in the rightness of God. Also evident is the marked contrast between the rich and the poor, which manifests itself in disparate levels of education, forms of dress, and modes of speech. Even transportation is a sign of class, as the wealthy Dunstan Cass was embarrassedly aware when his horse was killed and he was temporarily forced to walk on foot.

The feature of nineteenth-century England that the book demonstrates most strikingly, however, is its grandiloquence, at least among the aristocracy. Eliot’s sentences routinely exceed one hundred words, and her patterns of expression often seem intentionally prolix. For example, instead of simply explaining that Dunstan lied just for fun even when he was not likely to be believed, Eliot wrote that his “delight in lying, grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the likelihood that his hearer would not believe him…” Similarly, Eliot gave the age of the Raveled parish clerk not as “86” but as “fourscore and six.” This writing style, while verbose, permits enjoyable creativity in expression that is largely absent from the concise prose of the present day. And Eliot’s creativity is also evinced by the wealth of figurative language that she invents. For example, Marner’s surprising entrance into the local bar is illustrated by the statement that the men’s “long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antenna of startled insects.” Eliot likewise employed an effective simile in explaining the personality of Squire Cass: “he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided—as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock.”

Some students may not enjoy Eliot’s creative and challenging use of language, but her style is one with which everyone should at least be somewhat familiar. In addition, Silas Marner offers rich historical insight into life two hundred years ago, as well as the lesson that it is never too late to reform oneself. Therefore, Silas Marner should be a mandatory book, so that students who would not otherwise consider reading it will have exposure to those aspects that make it unique and worthwhile.

significance of the soliloquies by Hamlet in the play Hamlet or Dramatic significance of the soliloquies by Hamlet in the play Hamlet

Soliloquy is a dramatic technique of speaking alone on the stage. It is a dramatic convention of exposing to the audience – the intentions, thoughts and feelings of a character who speaks to himself while no one remains on the stage. Here in the tragic play “Hamlet” the soliloquies spoken by the protagonist are directed to the audience, rather than seeming like conversations with himself. Some of the famous Hamlet’s soliloquies have been elucidated below.

Hamlet’s first soliloquy reveals him to be thoroughly disgusted with Gertrude, Claudius and at the world in general. He considers the world to be an unweeded garden with no significance of life and in a grievous tone says:

“O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

He is saddened at the death of his father, whom he admired as a king and husband to his mother. His grief over his father’s death is compounded by his mother’s hasty marriage to Claudius. Hamlet believes that even a beast that has no power of reasoning, would mourn longer but she had not. The worst part is that he cannot tell them how he feels. This soliloquy kindles an interest in the readers and provides a glimpse on Hamlet’s thoughts while informing the audience of the history of his family’s tribulations.

In the second soliloquy, Hamlet calls on the audience ‘the distracted globe’ to hear his vow to take revenge on his uncle. Now he promises to erase all the foolish lessons in order to remember the commandment of the ghost. The ghost that resembles his father has told him that King Claudius has murdered his father and his soul cannot rest until the revenge is taken. The audience here learns Hamlet’s promise to make Clausius pay for this unnatural crime. Already the audience is excited at Hamlet’s promise because it is giving them something to look forward.

In his third soliloquy, Hamlet admits to the audience that he is a coward. So for his inaction like a day dreamer, he is chiding himself in this way:

“O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I!

Then he is telling the audience about his new idea of justifying the credibility of the news provided by the ghost. This results in delay to reach his goal. Although heaven and hell urge him to take revenge, he must examine the truth through the play with the poison pouring scene. If his uncle reacts to the scene, he will be confirmed of his uncle’s involvement in the murder. Now the audiences have even more of a buildup of what is to come.

In the fourth soliloquy, the Prince of Denmark is in a dilemma whether to commit suicide or to accept the pangs of the world stoically or to fight back against them.

“To be or no to be – that is the question;”

Then he is frightened of the consequences of the life after death and its punishment. He puts a logic that if there were no punishment of God for suicide, nobody would tolerate injustice, the insults of the world, the arrogance of the undeserving superiors, the sufferings of the unrequited love, the delay of law, adversities and the cruelty of a tyrant. It is such fear that robs of courage to commit suicide and transforms us into a coward. Here the audience observes that Hamlet is incapable of taking revenge, as he is always contemplative.

In conclusion, it is clear from the above discussion that the audience is always being included in Hamlet’s thinking process through the use of the soliloquies. Such involvement of the audience helps the real meaning of the play shine through. Some critics view that without the soliloquies, the play “Hamlet’ would degenerate into a cheap melodrama.

Marvell as a love poet

Marvell’s love-poems constitute an important division of lyric poetry, the other two important divisions being poems dealing with the theme of religion and those dealing with the theme nature. His love-poems include The Fair Singer, The Definition of e, To His Coy Mistress, Young Love, The Unfortunate Lover, The Picture of Little T.C., The Mower to the Glo-worms, and Damon the Mower. Then there are poems in which the theme of love occurs a subsidiary subject, poems like Upon Appleton House and The oh Complaining. Marvell’s treatment of love in his poems attracts the readers. Now let us discuss how Marvell treats love in his poems.

At first in certain respects, Marvell is Petrarchan in his love-poems. The Petrarchan mode gave glowing and eloquent praises on beloved’s beauty. The Petrarchan lover often sighed for the indifference of his beloved. Now, this Petrarchan mode is found in at least three of the love-poems, namely The Fair Singer, To His Coy Mistress, and Unfortunate Lover. In the first of these poems, the lover praises the beauty of his mistress’s eyes and voice in an extravagant way like a typical Petrarchan lover. In To His Coy Mistress the lover speaks of the mistress’s limbs in hyperbolic terms, asserting that hundreds and thousands of years to be able to adequately. In The Unfortunate Lover, the lover has let winds and the waves sigh and shed tears.

It has been said that Marvell’s love poems lack passions. But the charge of a want of passion is not applicable for the above three poems. In these three poems the passion of the lover is as in any Elizabethan love-poem. The statement that Marvell‘s verse is cold is certainly not true of these three poems. In the Fair Singer, the lover says that both beauties of his mistress of her eyes and the, beauty other voice have joined the fatal harmony to bring about his death, and that with her voice she captivates his mind. He then goes on to speak of the “curled trammels of her hair” in which his I heart got entangled, and the subtle art with which she can-weave fetters him of the very air he breathes. If a lover can thus speak about his feelings, we cannot say that he is a cold kind of lover. In poem To His Coy Mistress, the passion is equally ardent. While lover adopts a witty and somewhat sarcastic manner of speaking first two stanzas, he becomes truly ardent and, fervid in his passion in last stanza. In this final stanza he reaches the zenith of his passion when he suggests that he and she should roll their strength and all their sweetness up into one ball and should their pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life. In The Unfortunate Lover also the passion is intense, almost red-hot. Inver is here hit by “all the winged artillery of Cupid” and, like Idi finds himself between the “flames and the waves”.

Another feature of Marvell’s love poems is that they are often based on arguments. Marvell’s most famous argumentative love poem is To His Coy Mistress. There is another poem namely “Young Love” in which the argumentative quality paramount and the passion of love is therefore superseded by the logic which dominates the poem. This poem has an absolutely unconventional theme. Its title is Young Love, and here a grown up man has conceived a passion for a little girl (of about thirteen fourteen). The lover proceeds to persuade the young, immature to love him in return, and he gives all kinds of argument convince her. He would like her to make up her mind quickly not to wait till she attains the age of fifteen. There is a possibility that fate might afterwards thwart them in their desire to love each other; now is therefore the time and the opportunities for them crown each other with their loves. The whole poem is one extended argument, and the originality of the poem lies in the manner the argument is developed. The response of the girl is not a part of the poem, but we can imagine that she could not have resisted such a persuasive and importunate lover.

Disappointment in love is briefly introduced in the poem Nymph Complaining, the main subject of which is the death of pet fawn. However, the theme of love there cannot be ignored. The wrong which the Nymph suffered at the hands of her false lover Sylvio was as grave as the one she has now suffered at the hands of the wanton troopers who have killed her pet fawn. The Nymph is certainly not a cold-hearted girl. She loved Sylvio intensely, and her suffering when he deserted her was intense also. Equally strong must have been the love of the first Fairfax for Miss Thwait whom he was able ultimately to win as his bride in spite of the opposition of the nuns and her own excessive modesty, as related in the poem, on Appleton House. In these two poems, however, the passion of love is not much dwelt upon; it is merely indicated, and we have ourselves to imagine its love in the Pastoral Poems.

Thus, we see that as a love poet Marvell is sometimes Petrarchan, sometimes passionate and sometimes he is very argumentative. But the role of intellectual arguments of his poems also cannot be ignored. The intellectual arguments often become dominant and love is pushed into background.

Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet

William Wordsworth was the representative tine poet of the Romantic Revival which was a literary movement in art and literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was the pioneer in bringing about transition from Neo-classicism to Romanticism in English poetry. To him strong feeling, imagination and love of nature were more important than reason, order and intellectual ideas.

Wordsworth’s poetry is subjective. It is the spontaneous expression of his own feelings, ideas, and emotion. For examples, ‘Tintern Abbey’, ‘The Daffodils’ tell of his personal experiences and feelings that he had in different stages of his life.

Like other romantics Wordsworth believes that the power of poetry is strongest when the creative impulse is spontaneous. In this creative process imagination plays a very important role. Wordsworth’s imaginative faculty is so powerful that through imagination he can have a glimpse of the Eternity; Wordsworth gives ‘importance to subject matter rather than style. He always chooses simple and ordinary things as the subject matter of his poetry. He adds charm of novelty to the common things of life and Nature by the coloring of his imagination and thus makes them appear super-natural. He threw away the gaudiness and inane phraseology of the 18th century poetry and made the language of his poems more real and more natural than it was in the Neo-classic Age.

Wordsworth’s approach to Nature is mystical. He believes that the Spirit of God pervades the entire Universe, both animate and inanimate. He adds dignity to the worship of Nature and gives a color of romance and glory to the simple lives of countrymen living in the midst of Nature’s beautiful surroundings. He believes that there is a strong bond between Man and Nature, because in both of them dwells the Spirit of the Eternal Being.

How does Aeschylus build intense dramatic suspense around Agamemnon’s home coming in the play Agamemnon?

Agamemnon is treated as the masterpiece of Aeschylus. In it the action takes place before the palace of Agamemnon in Argos at the time of his victorious return from the Trojan War. Besides, the grand theme of the play based on sin, murder, punishment and a fatalistic conception of human life’, the intense dramatic suspense around Agamemnon’s homecoming occupies an important theme of the play. In order to create this dramatic suspense, Aeschylus imposes his creative and dramatic genius and we see how he was interested to represent this dramatic suspense. Although this dramatic suspense operates no serious purpose for the main action of the play it enhances our dramatic interest to a great extent. The suspense is created before Agamemnon’s arrival by the speeches of Watchman, Elders of Argos, Herald and so on. There is hope and also forbidding in the speeches.

The dramatic suspense is firstly created by the Watchman who waits in the dead of night and suddenly sends out a cry of joy as the signal blazes forth announcing the imminent return of Agamemnon. The Watchman strikes the first note of approaching calamity by guarded hints and allusion to Clytemnestra’s adulterous relation with Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s mortal enemy.

Dramatic suspense lies among the mixed feeling in the expression of Chorus. The Chorus’ emphasis is stronger on foreboding. It is not only Clytemnestra who arouses their fear – they trust Agamemnon to find a way to deal with her when he returns, but they know that the King himself is burdened with guilt. They recount in detail how Agamemnon, inheriting the family curses from Atreus; found himself faced with a fearful dilemma, and made the wrong choice to sacrifice his daughter. However, Aeschylus and Sophocles contain excellent dramatic motivation. Oracles, divinities and sooth Sayers as well as the chorus and main actors were frequently used in the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing (giving intimation or hints of action yet to come,) which helped to achieve both suspense and dramatic irony was employed.

The Watchman of this play feels sway in his condition for the suspense of situation. The Watchman describes that sleep’s enemy ‘fear’ stands beside him to forbid his eyes one instance closing. As the beacon shines out, before the Watchman the suspenseful circumstance further deepens:

“0 welcome beacon, kindling night to glorious day,
Welcome! You’ll set them dancing in every street in Argos
When they hear your message. Ho there! Hullo! Call
Clytemnestra!”

 The Watchman descends and another dramatic suspense starts by a cry of triumph from Clytemnestra and is echoed by other women. The hurried coming of a messenger followed by the attendants, going in various directions, and carrying jars and bowls with oil and incense for sacrifice increase the suspenseful situation. There is suspense in the circumlocutory speeches of the chorus and their conversations and interrogation with Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra creates confusion and suspicion by her speeches when she herself says that the victors would avoid being vanquished in their turn. Clytemnestra says that only, let no lust of unlawful plunder tempt the soldiers’ hearts with wealth, to their own harm.

Clytemnestra finishes her words by saying that these are a woman’s words while the chorus says that your words are like a man’s. After the finishing of chorus’ speech suspense arises when the sound of women voices excitedly begins the shout and cheer. One or two Elders go out, and return immediately to report the following remarks as made severally by various members of the chorus;

“Since the beacon’s nears was heard
Rumour flies through every street.
Ought we to believe a word?
Is it some inspired deceit?”

All doubts that remain about the truth of the beacon message are now dispelled by the arrival of the herald from the Trojan expeditionary force. This herald concludes the precious suspense but loads immense suspense in his speeches. The herald announces that Agamemnon, homeward bound has been separated from the rest of his fleet He salutes, in touching words, his country and her gods, and the palace of Agamemnon, which now shines its best to welcome its monarch, who comes like dawn out of darkness. The herald’s speech brings dramatic suspense to the audience because they know the mischievous revengeful attitude of Clytemnestra. As the time of Agamemnon’s reaching shortens, our suspense begins to enhance in every moment. When Agamemnon reaches Argos all the suspense are dissolved and he is heinously butchered by his wife.

Agamemnon’s arrival in the palace in confirmed by the Chorus’ welcome to him as it says:

“…you have come victorious home;
Now form our open hearts we wish you well.”

The opening scene of Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” prepares the audience psychologically for the events to come later. It introduces Clytemnestra, the most dominant character of the play, as a female having male traits. The watchman, through his representation of the Argive people, informs us of the unrest inside and outside the Argos palace at the prolonged absence of Agamemnon. Considering everything, it may be said that the opening scene is not a necessary, rather a preparatory part of the play. Thus, Aeschylus in his tragedy “Agamemnon” creates dramatic suspense around Agamemnon’s homecoming and it enhances the dramatic brilliance of the tragedy to a great extent.