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The Big Picture: Analyzing Fiction and Drama
Elements of Fiction
Know the following:
Plot
Narrative
Conflicts
Exposition
Rising Action
Climax
Suspense
Comedy
Tragedy
Falling Action
Denouement (day-noo-mah)
Stories may begin in medias res. What is that?
Flashback
Foreshadowing. Consider examples in “Agamemnon.”
Character (63-64)
Protagonist
Antagonist
Coming-of-Age story
Bildungsroman
Epiphany
Round Character
Flat Character
Foil
Stock characters
Developing Character
Direct Characterization
Indirect Characterization
Setting
Setting—what does it include?
Examples of settings. Consider weather.
Historical Context
Cultural Environment
Point-of-View
Know how this matters—the impact on the reader—the advantages and disadvantages; the effects.
Second-Person point of view
First-Person Point-of-View
Unreliable Narrator
Third-Person Point of View
Third Person
Omniscient Third Person
Limited Omniscient Narrator
Objective Narrator
Stream-of-Consciousness
What is it? Which writers were famous for it? From what era did this style of writing spring?
Narrative Frame. What is a narrative frame? Give a famous example.
Symbol p. 84
Theme
How many themes? Why?
Themes:
1. The subject and the theme are not the same.
2. Avoid clichés.
3. Do not ignore contradictory details.
4. A theme is not a moral.
5. A literary work almost always has more than one theme.
6. Themes can be questions.
Special Considerations for Analyzing Drama
Consider how the following components differ from other works of literature:
Plot
Acts
Scenes
Character
Dialogue
Soliloquy
Monologue
Dramatic Irony
Setting
Symbol
Prop
Principle of “Chekov’s gun.”
From Analysis to Essay: Writing an Interpretive Essay
“Trifles,” by Susan Glaspell (102).
Sexism can blind people to the truth—like in “Agamemnon.”
People may take desperate measures when they feel entrapped in a loveless marriage, in a cold isolated house, or in a society that doesn’t value them. Sound familiar?
Someone who is a criminal by one set of social standards might be a victim according to another set of social standards. Or, in other words, justice is not always the same as the rule of law (112).
Know the author's name.
The chorus is made up of what kind of people?
Natural v. Unnatural
Natural v. Supernatural
Order v. Chaos.
Natural is good. Order is good.
The unnatural and supernatural are bad. Remember what happened to Macbeth in the Scottish play.
The Furies--represent the old world--the Tribal world. It is irrational, highly emotional, and destructive. Blood must have blood. When Agamemnon kills Iphigenia, that gives Clytaemnestra the right to kill her husband. Iphigenia is related to both by blood. Clytaemnestra is not related to Agamemnon.
In the trilogy, "The Oresteia," there are three plays. The first is "Agamemnon." The second is "The Libation Bearers." In that play, Orestes returns and is commanded by Apollo to kill his mother, Clytaemnestra. In the last play, "The Eumenides," Orestes is tried by a jury of his peers (instead of by the gods) and acquitted.
The new world order, the one of civilization, recognizes that murder is murder. The jury must be dispassionate in deciding someone's fate. It is the world of the Greek City State.
Culture:
Revering the gods
Guest/Host Relationship (something seriously violated by the guest, Paris, when he stole his host's (Menelaus) wife, Helen of Troy
Women are lower than second-class citizens in this ancient culture. This sometimes makes them angry and willing to stir up trouble.
Hubris: thinking you are better than you are and making stupid decisions as a result. The over-reacher.
Watchman: "That woman--she maneuvers like a man." He speaks of Clytaemnestra as unnatural and therefore bad.
"...the rest is silence" (38). We will see that again in "Hamlet."
Why did the war start?
Who is frenzied?
The Chorus see Helen as at fault for the war. "all for a woman manned by many" (68). They bemoan all the useless deaths of the young men.
Allusions taken for T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and also taken from "Oedipus Rex":
We are the old, dishonored ones, / the broken husks of men. / Even then they cast us off, / the rescue mission left us here / to prop a child's strength upon a stick. / What if the new sap rises in his chest? / He has no soldiery in him, / no ore than we, / and we are aged past aging, / gloss of the leaf shriveled, / three legs at a time we falter on. / Old men are children once again, / a dream that sways and wavers/ into the hard light of day (78-92).
Who is Clytaemnestra's mom? What is Clytaemnestra's relationship to Helen of Troy?
Who is Calchas?
What is the bird-sign (augury) that he sees?
What does the bird sign mean?
Unnatural: "I beg you, Healing Apollo, soothe her before / her crosswinds hold us down and moor the ships too long, / pressing us on to another victim.../ nothing sacred, no / no feast to e eaten / the architect of vengeance / growing strong in the house / with no fear of the husband" (145-152).
Who are they begging to soothe?
Who has no fear of the husband?
Who gets sacrificed? Why?
"Zeus has led us on to know, / the Helmsman lays it down as law / that we must suffer, suffer into truth" (177-179). One of the major themes of the play: Humans must suffer into truth.
What does Calchas tell Agamemnon that he must do?
Later: "But Justice turns the balance scales, / sees that we suffer / and we suffer and we learn" ( 250-252).
Tribal: feed the Fury
Clytaemnestra talks bout her vision of Agamemnon's triumph: "One,/ first in the laps and last, wins out in triumph. / There you have my proof, my burning sign, I tell you--/ the power my lord passed on from Troy to me!" (315-318).
Agamemnon and his men not only sacked Troy, but they behaved in a sacrilegious way; they destroyed Troy's temples to the gods. Overkill. It wlil come back to haunt them.
Note all the excesses in Clytaemnestra's visions. Excesses are a sign of hubris:
Clytemnestra describes it:
"They are kneeling by the bodies of the dead,/ embracing men and brothers, infants over / the aged loins that gave them life, and sobbing, / as the yoke constricts their last free breath, / for every dear one lost. / And the others, there, plunging breakneck through the night--/ the labor of battle sets them down, ravenous; / to breakfast on the last remains of Troy. / Not by rank but the lots of chance they draw,/ they lodge in houses captured by the spear, / settling in so soon, released from the open sky,/ the frost and dew. Lucky men, off guard at last, / they sleep away their first good night in years" (328-340).
Then she gets sarcastic. She actually means the opposite of what she says:
"If only they are revering the city's gods, / the shrines of the gods who love the conquered land, / no plunderer will be plundered in return. / Just let no lust, no mad desire seize the armies / to ravish what they must not touch--/ overwhelmed by all they've won! / The run for home / and safety waits, the swerve at the post, / the final lap of the grueling two-lap race. / And even if the men come back with no offense / to the gods, the avenging dead may never rest--/ Oh let no new disaster strike! And here / you have it, what a woman has to say. / Let the best win out, clear to see. / A small desire but all that I could want" (341-354).
This speech is discursive, [proceeding to a conclusion through reasoning] and poetically significant. Aeschylus uses light that to symbolize enlightenment but also ambiguity of the outcome of Agamemnon's return. The Watchman thinks that Agamemnon's return will bring back to the good old days, primarily the restoration of order. For Agamemnon, though, Agamemnon's return means that she will have the "privilege" of killing him herself. She hates him and wants him dead; to have him dead at her own hands will be the greatest gift of all, as far as she is concerned. The fire of Ida that announces Agamemnon's triumph also reveals something about Agamemnon's sacrilegious conduct in Troy.
This passage also reveals the waste that comes with a war, especially a war waged over a woman.
Foreshadowing: "you slung your net on the towers of Troy" (361). The CHORUS speaks these words. Clytaemnestra will kill her husband by throwing a net over him as he bathes. Unarmed, and vulnerable, she will stab him to death. She will also kill Cassandra.
There are many references to the multi-generational nature of this kingdom's sins: "A curse burns bright on crime--/ full-blown, the father's crimes will blossom, / burst in to the son's" (378-380).
When Paris abducted Helen, he violated his role as the guest in that whole guest-host relationship. "...but the gods are deaf / to the one who turns to crime, they tear him down.
"So Paris learned: / he came to Atreus' house / and shamed the tables spread for guests, / he stole away the queen" (397-402).
And of course, order is good, chaos or disorder, bad:
"And she left her land chaos, clanging shields, / companions tramping, bronze prows, men in bronze, / and she came to Troy with a dowry, death, / strode through the gates / defiant in every stride, / as prophets of the house [Menelaus' house] looked on and wept, / 'Oh the halls and the lords of war, / the bed and the fresh prints of love. / I see him, unavenging, unavenged, / the stun of his desolation is so clear-- / he longs for the one who lies across the sea / until her phantom seems to sway the house'" (403-414).
Note the hubris of Menelaus' actions. He has just lost a woman, a woman that still lives. The citizens of Argos and Greece have lost their young men:
"So he grieves at the royal hearth / yet others' grief is worse, far worse. / All through Greece for those who flocked to war / they are holding back the anguish now, / you can feel it rising now in every house; / I tell you there is much to tear the heart./
"They knew the men they sent, / but now in place of men / ashes and urns come back / to every hearth./
"War, War, the great gold-broker of corpses / holds the balance of the battle on his spear! / Home from the pyres he sends them, / home from Troy to the loved ones, / weighted with tears, the urns brimmed full, the heroes returned in gold-dust, / dear, light ash for men; and they weep, / they praise them, 'He had skill in the sword-play,' 'He went down so tall in the onslaught,' / 'All for another's woman.' So they mutter / in secret and rancor steals /toward our staunch defenders, Atreus' sons" (425-446).
Do you hear the sarcasm in these words?
Again, the anger simmers beneath the surface, leaving the old men of the Chorus afraid:
"The people's voice is heavy with hatred, / now the curses of the people must be paid..." (451-452).
The Greeks also believed in moderation. Those who act to excess are the ones punished. Usually they are rich and powerful. Here the chorus says a kind of prayer:
"Make me rich with no man's envy, / neither a raider of cities, no, / nor slave come face to face with life / overpowered by another" (463-466).
Of course, once it is clear that Agamemnon will be returning, Clytaemnestra puts on quite a show. Everyone but Agamemnon knows that she is deceitful and evil. It must take everything they have not to laugh at her:
"And for his wife, / may he return and find her true at hall, / just as the day he left her, faithful to the last. A watchdog gentle to him alone, / savage to those who cross his path. I have not changed. / The strains of time can never break our seal. / In love with a new lord, in ill repute I am / as practiced as I am in dyeing bronze" (601-608).
When the LEADER says, "She speaks well, but it takes no seer to know / she only says what's right," he actually means that she is only saying what she thinks she should say (612-613).
This time, it is the HERALD that talks about "a great bloom / of corpses...Greeks, the pick of a generation / scattered through the wrecks and broken spars" (658-660).
The CHORUS then goes on and on about Helen and how it's all her fault that they have been at war. They refer to "Troy's Blood Wedding Day" (698).
There is the mention of dirges, funeral songs.
Again, the CHORUS mentions the multi-generational nature of this family's sins, along with the excesses:
"There's an ancient saying, old as man himself: / men's prosperity / never will die childless, / once full-grown it breeds. / Sprung from the great good fortune in the race / comes bloom on bloom of pain--/ insatiable wealth. But not I, / I alone say this. Only the reckless act / can breed impiety, multiplying crime on crime, / while the house kept straight and just /is blessed with radiant children" (744-754).
When the CHORUS says that "justice shines in sooty hovels," it is because they believed that those with fewer assets and perks were less likely to get so full of themselves (761).
Note how the CHORUS tries to warn their newly returned leader that he should not be so quick to trust others:
"When a man fails they share his grief, / but the pain can never cut them to the quick. / When a man succeeds they share his glory, torturing their faces into smiles. / But the good shepherd knows his flock. / When the eyes seem to brim with love / and it is only unction, / he will know, better than we can know" (775-782).
Unction: affected or exaggerated earnestness, especially in choice and use of language.
Now the problem is, Agamemnon is not such a great tactician after all. He totally does not get the hint.
The CHORUS even tells him how angry they are with him, and these guys are on AGAMEMNON'S side:
"That day you marshaled the armies / all for Helen--no hiding it now--/ I drew you in my mind in black; / you seemed a menace at the helm,/ sending men to the grave/ to bring her home, that hell on earth. / But now from the depths of trust and love / I say Well fought, well won--/ the end is worth the labor!" (783-791).
Then, the CHORUS hints that Agamemnon needs to figure out "who stayed at home and kept their faith / and who betrayed the city" (793-794).
AGAMEMNON never gets it. "How rare, men with the character to praise / a friend's success without a trace of envy, / poison to the heart--it deals a double blow. /Your own losses weigh you down but then, / look at your neighbor's fortune and you weep. / Well I know. I understand society, / the fawnign mirror of the proud," Agamemnon says (818-823).
Next, Clytaemnestra puts on an Academy-Award wining performance for the CHORUS and for her husband:
"Old nobility of Argos / gathered here, I am not ashamed to tell you / how I love the man. I am older, / and the fear dies away...I am human. / Nothing I say was learned from others. / This is my life, my ordeal, long as the siege / he laid at Troy and more demanding" (842-847).
Now, I'm sorry. Even if she did love her husband, I don't think that we can equate someone fighting a battle, someone in danger of losing his own life, with sitting at home,e specially sitting on a throne, and with power not normally accorded to you. And yet, she gets all "Meryl Streepy" on him:
"First, / when a woman sits at home and the man is gone, / the loneliness is terrible, / unconscionable..../ and the rumors spread and fester, / a runner comes with something dreadful, / close on his heels the next and his news worse, / and they shout it out and the whole house can hear; / and wounds--if he took one wound for each report / to penetrate these walls, he's gashed like a dragnet, / more, if he had only died..." (848-857).
By the way, a dragnet--isn't that foreshadowing?
Next, Clytaemnestra uses her powers of rhetoric. When one is outnumbered or out-weighed or out-armored in battle, one must use his/her mind. In this case, it is the element of surprise. Not only does she surprise her husband, she emotionally disarms him. Remember, at the end, she kills her husband when he is unarmed, taking a bath, in fact. Clytaemnestra also plays on Agamemnon's feelings of guilt over having killed their daughter, Iphigeneia:
"And so / our child is gone, not standing by our side, / the bond of our dearest pledges, mine and yours; / by all rights our child should be here..../ Orestes. You seem startled" (864-868).
Of course, he's startled. And so are the old nobility of Argos, and so is the audience. We so expected her to play the guilt trip. And, in a way, she does. She just switches gears.
Then, she projects her own true nature onto Agamemnon, and onto men in general:
"Men, it is their nature, trampling on the fighter once he's down" (874-875).
I mean, talk about trampling on the fighter when he's down--she's going to trample on Agamemnon when he's taking a bath!
Clytaemenstra lays it on real thick when she says "I'd watch till late at night, my eyes still burn, / I sobbed by the torch I lit for you alone" (879-880). Later, she's going to talk about how she likes Aegisthus because he lights her fire. Or something like that.
Now, remember, Agamemnon doesn't know what a deceitful succubus his wife really is. And if he's killed their daughter, and he's been gone for ages, maybe he should be a little kinder to her when he gets home. On the other hand, he has just brought home another woman, Cassandra, so maybe he is just showing off for her. After Clytaemnestra has ordered her maids to roll out the red carpet, and after she's given this huge speech, Agamemnon calls her "the keeper of my house" (my maid). Then he says that her speech is way too long and that "the praise that does us justice, / let it come from others, then we prize it" (910-911).
In other words, let the praise come from real human beings, that is, men!
Agamemnon is lighting his wife's fire, all right. She's ready to torch him!
Next Agamemnon shows his racist stripes. The Ancient Greeks didn't take kindly to "foreigners" and their racism is not subtle. "What am I, some barbarian peacocking out of Asia?" (912).
No, I want to say, you are a barbarian strutting out of Ancient Greece. Aggy, baby, you are responsible for the deaths of the next generation!
Of course, Agamemnon is right when he says that it's wrong to walk on the red carpet. The gods don't like such things. "Give me the tributes of a man / and not a god, a little earth to walk on, not this gorgeous work" (918-920).
CLYTAEMNSTRA kind of eggs AGAMEMNON on. "But Priam--can you see him if had your success?" she asks (930).
AGAMEMNON finishes the sentence for her: "Striding on the tapestries of God, I see him now" (931).
This, of course, is really ironic, because in about thirty seconds Agamemnon is going to walk on that red carpet himself.
Then there is that brief interaction between the couple:
CLYTAEMNESTRA: "And you fear the reproach of the common men?"
AGAMEMNON: "The voice of the people--aye, they have enormous power" (931-932).
CLYTAEMNESTRA likes the good old tribal ways, where leaders got to boss everyone else around, no questions asked. AGAMEMNON is starting to get his head on straight about how that doesn't work so well. And indeed, the entire Oresteia is all about the shift from the irrational, destructive tribal world as it evolves into what we think of as civilization, the world of reason and justice and all that.
Next, AGAMEMNON orders the maids to take off his stinky boots so that he can walk on the red carpet like the great hero he is.
"Hurry, / and while I tread his splendors dyed red in the sea, / may no god watch and strike me down with envy / from on high. I feel such shame--/ to tread the life of the house, a kingdom's worth / of silver in the weaving" (943-946).
AGAMEMNON even kind of blames his bad behavior on his wife: "And now, / since you have brought me down with your insistence, / just this once I enter my father's house, / trampling royal crimson as I go" (954-957).
This is also FORESHADOWING. Consider that he dies and spreads royal crimson in his own bathtub/ cauldron.
Soon we will get to meet CASSANDRA, the conquered PRIAM's daughter who also happens to be an unlucky and unhappy seer. She is kind of AGAMEMNON's girlfriend, except that she had no choice in the matter. Those of us who are not Ancient Greeks are likely to regard her as a victim.
CLYTAEMNESTRA starts ordering CASSANDRA around. Then she tells the seer that she should consider herself lucky. "Down from the chariot, / no time for pride. Why even Heracles, / they say, was sold into bondage long ago, he had to endure the bitter bread of slaves. / But if the yoke descends on you, be grateful / for a master born and reared in ancient wealth. / Those who reap a harvest past their hopes / are merciless to slaves.
"From us / you will receive what custom says is right" (1037-1045).
Now, who is reaping a harvest past their hopes? Clytaemnestra, that's who. And there's that "right" word again. It's all fake. And by the way, CLYTAEMNESTRA is going to murder this poor slave-girl. That's not very nice, if you ask me. And it's not right, either.
More foreshadowing: The LEADER tells CASSANDRA that she's "caught in the nets of doom" (1047).
This time, it is CLYTAEMNESTRA's turn to call CASSANDRA, foreigner a barbarian. Again, this is ironic because most of us would consider the murder of an innocent as pretty barbaric.
Once CLYTAEMNESTRA leaves the room, CASSANDRA gets all prophetic. She even knows the entire history of this dysfunctional family. In those days, that would have been impossible. And the LEADER and the CHORUS are impressed. But because she is cursed, they will not believe her.
The LEADER complains about her riddles.
Riddles, by the way, are usually a really bad sign. Remember the Sphynx. That story did not end well.
"No, she is the snare, / the bedmate, deathmate, murder's strong right arm! / Let the insatiate discord in the race / rear up and shriek, 'Avenge the victim--stone them dead!'" (1119-1122).
Besides the fact that CASSANDRA is doomed not to be believed, these old guys just can't wrap their heads around the idea that a woman could outsmart a man, let alone cut him into pieces.
This next part, the part of the CHORUS, also reminds me of T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men": "Drop by drop at the heart, the gold of life ebbs out. / We are the old soldiers...wounds will come / with the crushing sunset of our lives" (1125-1127).
The LEADER and the CHORUS then make a reference to CASSANDRA's craziness:
"Mad with the rapture--god spEeds you on /to the song, the deathsong, / like the nightingale that broods on sorrow, / mourns her son, her son, / her life inspired with grief for him, / she lilts and shrills, dark bird that lives for night" (1145-1150).
CASSANDRA: "The nightingale--O for a song, a fate like hers! The gods agave her a life of ease, swathed her wings, / no tears, no wailing. The knife waits for me" (1151-1153).
This is a mythical allusion to the story of Philomela. Tereus was married to Philomela's sister, Procne. Tereus raped Philomela, then cut out her tongue so that she could not tell her sister. Again, he miscalculated the intelligence of a woman. Philomela wove the truth into a tapestry. Procne avenged her sister's pain by killing Tereus' son, Itys, and serving him up to his dad to eat. Does this sound familiar?
What doesn't sound familiar, and what is referenced in the lines above, is that Procne was changed into a nightingale as she mourned for her son. The name, Itys, supposedly sounds like the nightingale's song. Turning into a nightingale is probably better than being chopped up by your violator's wife.
What do we call that when a word sounds like the way it should sound?
Another interesting thing in the Norton textbooks. There is a footnote when CASSANDRA starts saying, "Then off with the veils that hid the fresh young bride--/ we will see the truth" (1183-1184). The editor notes that Cassandra's meter changes from lyric song and that lyric song is the medium of emotion, to spoken iambic lines, the medium of rational discourse. Even teachers can learn something new every day.
CASSANDRA speaks of the FURIES, who are frenzied, "showering curses," etc. They are 100% irrational emotion, all about vengeance.
I love it when CASSANDRA describes Aegisthus as "A lion who lacks a lion's heart,/ he sprawled at home in the royal lair / and set a trap for the lord on his return" (1236-1238). In other words, Aegisthus is really a wimp and a bully.
CASSANDRA also talks about how AGAMEMNON's pride keeps him from seeing his wife for what she is:
"The lord of the men-of-war, he obliterated Troy--/ he is so blind, so lost to that detestable hellhound / who pricks her ears and fawns and her tongue draws out /her glittering words of welcome--/ No, he cannot see / the stroke that Fury's hiding, stealth, murder. / What outrage--the woman kills the man!" (1240-1244).
Again, these dudes just don't get it. Here is the leader: "What man prepares this, this dreadful--"
CASSANDRA cuts him off: "Man? / You are lost, to every word I've said" (1268-1269).
If she were around today, she'd say, "duh!"
CASSANDRA calls CLYTEMNESTRA "the lioness, / she rears on her hind legs, she beds with the wolf [sounds pretty unnatural to me] / when her lion king goes ranging--" (1277-1279).
CASSANDRA also tells of the coming of ORESTES: "We will die, / but not without some honor from the gods. / There will come another to avenge us, / born to kill his mother, born / his father's champion. A wanderer, a fugitive / driven off his native land, he will come home / to cope the stones of hate that menace all he loves. / The gods have sworn a monumental oath: as his father lies / upon the ground he draws him home with power like a prayer" (1304-1312).
I find it interesting how, toward the end of her life, CASSANDRA refers to herself as "like a bird fresh caught" (1342).
Even though they don't believe CASSANDRA, the CHORUS intuits that something is wrong in the state of Denmark, so to speak:
"But the lust for power never dies--/ men cannot have enough. / No one will lift a hand to send it /from his door, to give it warning,/ 'Power, never come again!' / Take this man: the gods in glory / gave him Priam's city to plunder, / brought him home in splendor like a god" (1359-1366).
Do you think they could be talking about the walk on the red carpet here? Well, that and the destruction of the temples at Troy.
CLYTAEMNESTRA kills her husband and stands over him, triumphant. She also violates the whole give-a-great-warrior-a-proper-burial deal when she says that she does not have to follow the same rules as everyone else:
"Words, endless words I've said to serve the moment--/ Now it makes me proud to tell the truth. How else to prepare a death for deadly men / who seem to love you? How to rig the nets [note the use of the word and the fact that she used nets and a knife to kill her husband] of pain so high no man can overleap them? / I brooded on this trial, this ancient blood feud / year by year. At last my hour came. / Here I stand and here I struck / and here my work is done. I did it all...../ He had to way to flee or fight his destiny--/ our never-ending, all embracing net, I cast it / wide for the royal haul, I coil him round and round / in the wealth, the robes of doom, and then I strike him / once, twice, and at each stroke he cries in agony--/ he buckles at the knee and crashes here!/ And when he's down, I add the third, last blow, / to the Zeus who saves the dead beneath the ground/ I send that third blow him in homage like a prayer" (1395-1413).
Do you remember what she said earlier--about how with men "It is their nature, trampling on the fighter once he's down"? This is exactly what she is doing.
Note the hubris of Clytaemnestra's words:
"Rejoice if you can rejoice--I glory. / And if I'd pour upon his body the libation / it deserves, what wine could match my words? / It is right and more than right. He flooded / the vessel of our proud house with misery, / with the vintage of the curse and now / he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last" (1421-1427).
The CHORUS threatens to sentence her to exile. Of course, they have no power. Also, CLYTAEMNESTRA brings up their hypocrisy. "But he--/ name one charge you brought against him then. / He thought no more of it than killing a beast / and his flocks were rich, teeming in their fleece, / but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, / the agony I labored into love, / to charge the savage winds of Thrace.
"Didn't the law demand you banish him?--/ hunt him from the land for all his guilt? / But now you witness what I've done / and you are ruthless judges" (1442-1452).
The CHORUS laments the way AGAMEMNON died--not like a great warrior on the battlefield, but by the hands of his wife--a woman: "Here in the black widow's web you lie, / gasping out your life / in a sacrilegious death, dear god, / reduced to a slave's bed, / my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate,/ by the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword" (1524-1529).
They continue to lament the lack of rites: "You, can you dare this? / To kill your lord with your own hand / then mourn his soul with tributes, terrible tributes--/ do his enormous work a great dishonor. / This godlike man, this hero. Who at the grave will sing his praises, pour the wine of tears? / Who will labor there with truth of heart?" (1575-1581).
CLYTAEMNESTRA gloats about how Agamemnon is going to have to face the consequences of killing his own daughter when he goes to the Underworld:
"This house will never mourn for him. / Only our daughter, Iphigeneia, / by all rights, will rush to meet him / first at the churning straits, / the ferry over tears--/ she'll fling her arms around her father, / pierce him with her love" (1585-159).
AEGISTHUS gives us the gory details of the death of his brothers at the hands of Uncle Atreus. Remember, cannibalism was involved. AEGISTHUS is also a wimp. He threatens the old men. The LEADER makes fun of him: "You rule Argos? You who schemed his death / but cringed to cut him down with your own hand?" (1670-1671).
AEGISTHUS has to admit it. "The treachery was the woman's work, clearly." He also says that something needs to be done about Orestes.
Orestes, of course, will return in the next play, "The Libation Bearers." In that second play of The Oresteia, Orestes will, at the behest of Apollo, avenge his father's death by killing Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. When Orestes kills, however, he does not rejoice in his act. Instead, he feels terrible.
In the third play, "The Eumenides," Orestes will be tried, not by the gods, but by a jury of his peers. Thus, the cycle is complete. The old, tribal ways are gone, issuing in a new world of justice and reason.
What is a close reading?
What is the role of observation?
What is a graphic organizer? How might it be helpful?
Tone:
Mood:
Narrator:
Setting:
Themes:
Two works mentioned: Excerpt from Willa Cather's My Antonia and A. E. Housman's poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young."
The Elements of Style:
Diction
Denotation
Connotations
Formal or Informal Diction
Figurative Language
Simile
Metaphor
Personification
Analogy
Extended Metaphor
Overstatement or Hyperbole
Understatement
Paradox
Irony
Verbal Irony
Imagery
Syntax
Inverted syntax
Tone
Mood
Abstract v. Concrete Diction
Rhyme:
Free Verse:
End Rhyme:
Internal Rhyme:
Eye (or sight) rhymes:
Near Rhyme:
Quatrain
Couplet
Meter
Feet
Iambic meter
Iamb
Iambic pentameter
Iambic Tetrameter
Blank Verse
Form: conventional or unconventional?
How does the structure relate to the meaning of the poem?
Look for sentence patterns
Look for patterns of imagery
See how the stanzas interact
What are the two types of sonnets and what are the differences?
Other traditional forms;
Elegy
Lyric
Ode
Villanelle
Poetic Syntax
Enjambment
Caesura
Sound of poems--musical quality
Alliteration
Assonance
Onomatopoeia
Cadence
Know the kinds of questions to ask.
Oxymoron
Parallel Structure
Literary Elements
Annotation
Exploratory Writing. Consider graphic organizer.
Thesis statement.
What to do and what to avoid
Caring about your topic, investing in it.
Integrating Quotations
Documenting Sources.
Comparison / Contrast Essay
Develop a thesis statement
Text-by-Text Organization
Element-by-Element Organization
Know what the author means by telling the truth and telling it slant.
What makes an effective reader?
What are some of the ways that we approach literature?
What is significant about the title of Frost's poem, "Out, out"?
Experience
Analysis
Point of View
Allusion
Ex
It starts with Tantalus. He is the son of Zeus and a mortal. He thinks he is all that and decides to see if he can play a trick on the gods. So he invites them over to dinner, and then serves them a scrumptious meal that just happens to include Tantalus' own son, Pelops. Since Pelops is the grandson of a god, that's considered cannibalism. The gods realize what has happened--well, all except Demeter, who in some versions takes a bite out of his shoulder. They get mad at Tantalus and sentence him to an afterlife where he will always be thirsty and hungry and never have those desires met. The word "tantalize" comes from Tantalus.
Niobe is Tantalus' daughter, and the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. She starts bragging about how she has seven beautiful sons and daughters, seven times as many as the goddess Leto. Leto is the mother to Apollo and Artemis, and, as a god and a goddess, they are way cooler than Niobe's fourteen children. Besides, it's not good to brag about how much better you are than a supernatural being. All of Niobe's children are killed and Niobe, in her grief, turns to stone.
Pelops famously wins his wife, Hippodamia, in a race, through some trickery too. It's not good Karma to be responsible for the death of your future father-in-law. Also, Pelops might be responsible for the death of Myrtilus.
Pelops and Hippodamia have two children, Thyestes and Atreus.
Atreus tricks his brother, Thyestes, into giving up the throne. Thyestes gets even by sleeping with Atreus' wife, Aerope. Atreus finds out but keeps it quiet for a while. Finally, he makes nice to Thyestes. He invites Thyestes to dinner. At dinner, Atreus serves up Thyestes' two sons.
Thyestes flees in horror. Later, Thyestes sleeps with his own daughter (yuk!), Pelopia, which results in the birth of Aegisthus.
Meanwhile, back on the throne, Atreus and Aerope enjoy their two children--Menelaus and Agamemnon.
Menelaus marries a hot chick named Helen of Troy. Helen runs off with Paris. As a result of his bruised ego, Menelaus convinces his brother that they need to attack Troy. Helen, by the way, is half divine. She is the daughter of Leda, who had been seduced by Zeus, in the form of a swan. She also had a brother but I don''t remember his name at the moment.
Agamemnon marries another one of Leda's daughters, Clytemnestra. Tundareus is her father, which makes Helen and Clytemnestra half-sisters. Both women are big trouble. Clytemnestra is all human, but smart. While Agamemnon is out fighting the Trojans, Clytemnestra has been taking charge of the kingdom. And she likes it.
Clytemnestra gets angry with Agamemnon, because Agamemnon sent for their daughter, Iphigenia. Shortly after he got Iphigenia on his ship, he sacrificed her to the goddess Artemis. He didn't want to do it but the other options were less appealing. Still, it angers Clytemnestra.
Perhaps it's because she is bored, or perhaps it's just her way of getting even, but Clytemnestra invites Aegisthus back home and then starts having a fling with him. Remember, Aegisthus is the son of Uncle Thyestes, the dude who ate his own kids and slept with his own daughter. Aegisthus has an axe to grind, one he'd like to put in Agamemnon's head. Aegisthus, however, is pretty much a wimp--more talk than action. Clytemnestra is much more scary and she pushes Aegisthus around just like she pushes the old men of the kingdom around.
Cassandra is Agamemnon's new girlfriend, another reason that Clytemnestra might be a little angry. Cassandra is the daughter of King Priam. Since Priam lost the war and Agamemnon won, Agamemnon got to keep Cassandra as a prize. This was common. Cassandra is beautiful and gifted. Her greatest gift and curse is her ability to see events she has not witnessed and to predict the future. The problem is, however, that no one believes her. Apollo cursed her in this way because Cassandra would not sleep with him. Gods don't take kindly to not getting their own way.
Besides the sacrificed Iphigenia, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra have two other children who will not appear in this play. They do appear in the other two plays that go with this Oresteia trilogy--"The Libation Bearers" and "The Eumenides."
Electra is their daughter. She lives quietly at home.
Orestes, for whom the trilogy is named, is living in exile abroad. This is probably because his mother considers Orestes a threat to her power. Another reason, however, is that she might fear that her boyfriend, Aegisthus, might kill him. Orestes will return in 'The Libation Bearers." At Apollo's command for justice, he will kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in this play. In "The Eumenides," Orestes will be tried for his crime by a jury of his peers. He will be acquitted "by the law of Athena."
Themes and other things to notice:
Guest/Host relationship
Proper Burial
Tribal (revenge) v. City State (justice)
Reverence for the gods
Furies
Monday/Tuesday:
We will continue our discussions of the summer reading--briefly. Then I have a brief slide show about the kinds of things to notice in a novel. We may finish the movie--but just watch the last part. It's pretty boring, so I might just skip to the final scene. Then we will talk about the movie and how it compares to the novel.
Next, you will get a hand-out on "The House of Atreus." We will be beginning the play, "Agamemnon," a book we have in class, so you do not have to bring your books on Monday/Tuesday. Bring your literature & composition books on Wednesday/Thursday, however.
I will assign parts. We will act out the parts. In between, I will give you notes.
Homework: Read chapter one from Literature & Composition. Bring your Literature & Composition textbook on Wednesday/Thursday as well as your vocabulary book.
Wednesday/Thursday:
Go over chapter one from Literature & Composition. We may read several of the poems aloud. Brief discussion.
Continue with "Agamemnon."
We will go over the vocabulary words for chapter two.
Homework: Chapter two of vocabulary.
Friday:
I will check to see that you have completed your vocabulary homework. We may go over another short piece from Chapter One--but do not haul your heavy books to class.
Homework: Read chapter two in Literature and composition.
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