Thoughts on Aeschylus, Seminar Paper

Aeschylus' Oresteia is a trilogy of plays concerning Agamemnon and his children. They are, in order, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and the Eumenides. I had read them before last week; Junior year in highschool. Naturally I got almost nothing out of them. But last week....Man it was something else.

What is justice? How does justice differ from vengeance? How does society deal with crime? How does murder affect you? How does it affect others around you?

To be brief, Agamemnon comes home after his campaign in Troy and is murdered, along with Cassandra, by his wife Clytemnestra with the aid of her lover Aegisthos. Orestes, Electra, Agamemnon's son and daughter, avenge their father's death by killing their mother and her lover.

Orestes is haunted by the Eumenides, three Furies who avenge blood. He flees Argos and travels to Athens where he supplicates Athena to help him. Athena holds a trial that finds Orestes not guilty of murder, and sets things right in a near Deus ex machina. It is almost, but not quite.

The questions we raised in our reading of The Oresteia were every bit as powerful as the questions we raised in The Iliad. In fact, I would say that The Oresteia is my second favorite work. We have finished The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Oresteia, and now we will be tackling Herodotus. But to date, my favorite is the first Homeric epic. In fact, I will (I think) be composing my Seminar paper on The Iliad in general and Achilleus in particular - his character.

I want to focus on first an extensive sketch of Achilles, and then describe his downfall of grief and wrath, and finally his redemption in his meeting with Priam. So I would start by trying to ascertain what Achilles was like before his quarrel with Agamemnon by leafing through the text, and then study his rage at Agamemnon, and then his grief at Patroclus's death, his new, fiercer wrath at the Trojans in general, and Hektor (maybe himself?) in particular. Then I would study Hektor's death and Achilles' continuing wrath, finally culminating in its resolution with Priam.

I hope this works. O Lord, help me write this paper.

Join me then, in my study of Herodotus and my journey back to The Iliad.
~Alyosha