GROUP C

YUMNA JAVAID (3790)

AYESHA SADDIQUE (3782)

GULZAIB NUSRAT (3786)

RANA NABEEL HABIB (3780)

ASSIGNED BY :

SIR AAMIR SHAHEEN

ELECTRA

BY

SOPHOCLES

Tree Chart PELOPS

ATREUS THYSTES

AGAMEMNON+CLYTEMNESTRA MENELAUS+HELEN AEGISTHUS

IPHIGENIA ORESTES ELECTRA CHRYSOTHEMIS

Background

When Agamemnon, the resident King, returned from the Trojan War, his

wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered him.

The daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Electra, smuggled her

brother Orestes out of town so that he could grow up safe in a foreign land

and come back some day to avenge their dad.

SUMMARY:

Electra – Orestes's sister was abused on regular basis because she did not

accept new king.

Her sister, Chrysothemis, accepted Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and live a

life of comfort.

Debate between both sisters about their attitude towards king and queen.

An intense scene between Electra and her mother, Queen Clytemnestra.

Electra called her mother a murdering sinner.

According to her mother, Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia

in order to get his ships home from the Trojan War so Agamemnon should

also died.

Meanwhile slave appeared with the fake news of Orestes death.

Electra was in grief, but the Queen was relieved.

Electra wanted to take revenge herself.

When she started sharpening her sword, Orestes showed up with his

friend, Pylades.

Both of them made a plan to take avenge from the queen and king.

After killing her mother ,Orestes appeared with the dead body covered in

a sheet.

Just then King Aegisthus came and pleased because he heard that

Orestes had died but soon he realized that it was his wife’s dead body.

He resigned himself to his fate (being murdered by Orestes) and is ushered

inside the palace as the play came to end.

PLOT STRUCTURE:

Setting:

setting (time) · An unspecified number of years (perhaps a decade or

two) after the end of the Trojan War

setting (place) · Mycenae

major conflict:

Electra's intense desire to exact revenge from her mother for her father's

death conflicts with the play's central and underlying question of whether

that revenge is indeed just and warranted.

rising action:

Orestes arrives unannounced at Mycenae; Clytemnestra has a dream about Agamemnon's return; the Old Man brings false news of Orestes's death; Orestes reveals himself to Electra.

Climax:

Orestes enters the palace, where Clytemnestra is alone; Electra waits outside for Aegisthus.

falling action:

Orestes kills Clytemnestra; Aegisthus discovers her body; Orestes leads Aegisthus inside to be killed in the spot where he killed Agamemnon

CHARACTERS

Electra:

Electra is the eldest daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. Poorly

treated by her mother and her mother's husband.

Clytemnestra:

Clytemnestra is the Queen of Argos. Formerly married to

Agamemnon, whom she murdered, she now reigns corruptly alongside

Aegisthus, her paramour.

Chrysothemis:

Chrysothemis is the younger daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon.

Old Man:

The Old Man is the faithful servant to whom Electra entrusted Orestes as a

young boy.

Aegisthus:

Aegisthus is the paramour of Clytemnestra and responsible for the murder

of Agamemnon.

Chorus:

The chorus is comprised of the virgins of the palace.

Pylades:

Pylades is Orestes's silent friend who accompanies him and the Old Man

to Mycenae to exact revenge for Agamemnon's death

ANALYSIS OF

MAJOR

CHARACTERS

Electra:

Electra, the protagonist of the drama, has an extremely complex role in

that the principles of justice and honor to which she so stubbornly adheres

require her to do the unthinkable

Electra is right to mourn at her father's murder by her mother. Her mourning

is a natural response to an awful occurrence.

When Clytemnestra insists that she murdered Agamemnon to exact

revenge for his sacrifice of their daughter. Electra counters by arguing that

justice cannot be achieved by answering a killing with another killing.

Critical : This raises questions about the integrity of Electra's character for

Electra herself longs to avenge her father's death.

Orestes

Orestes instructed by Apollo's oracle to avenge Agamemnon's murder, Orestes displays a

level of immaturity that renders the ultimate revenge—the serious matter of matricide—morally

ambiguous.

His initial uneasiness about lying about his own death suggests a certain level of childish

superstition, and his lie of choice—that he was killed in a chariot race—reflects the naiveté of

both youth and wealth. His desire to avenge his father's death is not motivated by intense

emotion or the principles of honor or justice.

Orestes acts as he does because he has been so instructed by the oracle of Apollo.

Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra also adds to the complexity of the final revenge.

Electra tells us that Clytemnestra is a cruel, pitiless, woman, a killer of her

own husband who deserves to be punished for her actions.

According to Electra, Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon so that she could

be with Aegisthus. Clytemnestra, however, paints a very different picture

of the murder.

She says that she was exacting revenge for Agamemnon's unnecessary

sacrifice of their daughter.

If this is the case, the problem of revenge takes on a new shape. The

unsettling ambiguity of Clytemnestra'

THEMES

Revenge:

Electra examines a "blood for blood" revenge code and asks whether this

is a satisfying approach to justice.

The problem, tautologically evident, is that "blood for blood" is a never-

ending chain.

A person murders, someone murders her for vengeance, so then the new

murderer must be murdered for vengeance, and so on.

The Degrading Effects of Dishonor:

Throughout the play, characters make reverent reference to the abstract

concept of honor and guard wildly against dishonor.

In his prayer to the household gods at the start of the play, Orestes begs

not to be exiled from honor but rather to succeed in his mission and gain

his rightful command over the house.

One of Electra's preoccupations, too, is preserving and ensuring the honor

of her family, her father, and herself.

The Opposing Values of Justice and Expediency:

Perhaps best embodied in the characters of Electra and Chrysothemis

respectively, the opposing value systems of justice and expedience come

into frequent conflict.

Electra adheres strongly to the principle of justice, willing to suffer and

mourn continually in its name and in its pursuit.

Chrysothemis, on the other hand, performs those actions from which she

will derive greatest benefit, regardless of whether or not they are

necessarily "just."

Duty:

Electra examines what happens when different kinds of duty come into

conflict.

There is duty to family members, to the gods, to the state (as demanded

by law), to the dead, and to the self.

Fate and Free Will:

In this play, young Orestes is commanded by Apollo to murder his mother.

Does this exonerate him of responsibility for his crime? Could he disobey

the god if he wanted?

His family seems to be under a "curse" given that murder, betrayal, and

mayhem have plagued its last five generations.

MOTIFS

Entrapment:

Entrapment reveals itself in the ways in which the various characters try to

affect each other.

Orestes is instructed by Apollo to "snare" his father's killers as if in a trap

similar to the one in which his killers have caught the palace and its

inhabitants.

Breeding:

On many occurrences throughout the play, the idea of "breeding"

surfaces in reference to a variety of things.

The chorus relates that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus have "bred a thing

shaped like a monster" and that with her constant mourning Electra

"breeds enemies;" also prevalent is the idea of "breeding violence out of

violence."

Freedom:

The concept of freedom ultimately serves both to contrast with the idea of

entrapment and to emphasize the psychology of different characters in

the play.

For Chrysothemis, the epitome of one ruled by expedience, "freedom" is

gained by obeying one's masters and hence retaining the benefit of

creature comforts those masters can bestow.

SYMBOLS

The tree:

The tree is a symbol, ultimately, of the natural order of Agamemnon's

rule, so violently corrupted by his murder and the usurpation of his power.

The doorway:

The doorway, or threshold, is symbolic of the division between honor and

dishonor, good and evil, light and dark.

It is where Electra spends all of her time, half inside, half out on the

street, as if waiting to bring goodness (Orestes) inside to purge the evil

(Clytemnestra and Aegisthus).

The knot:

Throughout the play, Electra's intense desire for revenge is symbolized as a

knot—one that no one.

She claims, can untie, as it grows tighter and stronger with each passing

day that she must live amongst evil and corruption.

ILLUSIONS

Mythological Reference:

Orestes, Electra, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Chrysothemis, Ap

ollo, and Iphigenia – these are characters in the main plot line of

Electra, but don't forget that they come from Greek mythology and had

been outlined in gory detail (literally) 400-ish years before in Homer's work.

Sophocles's audience would have been very familiar with these figures.

Hera

Atreus

The Delphic Oracle

Ares

Hades and Persephone

Hermes

The Furies

Itys

Niobe

Zeus

Pelops Myrtilus

Menelaus

Helen

Artemis Nemesis

Lord Amphiaraus

ANALYSIS

Protagonist:

The protagonist of the drama is Electra.

Her hatred for mother and all- consuming desire for revenge bring about

powerful changes in her psyche that call into question her personal

justifications for revenge.

She is the embodiment of a central theme of the play, namely, how

revenge affects its perpetrator.

Electra Writing Style:

Stately, Metered

Sophocles's original Greek text was written in meter.

Tone:

Morally ambiguous tone

Sophocles presents the story of Electra with an openness and honesty

that acknowledges the ironically "bad" sides of the "heroes" and the "good"

sides of the "villains," in effect blurring the distinctions between these two

categories. This lends the play a morally ambiguous tone.

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