Sacrifice Play -Will Brady
Another reading, another close-up focus on the gruesome death to which all men succumb.
Yes, this story was about the closing of a decade-long war. But between the woeful lamenting of the chorus and the torturous combat accounts the herald brought back, the people of Argos have Gilgamesh licked when it comes to despairing wails about the morality of man. Even some of the imagery made me think of death: When Clytemnestra celebrated Agamemnon's return with a red carpet and the words "Let the red stream flow and bear him home" (line 901), that doesn't bring anything to my mind except a vision of Agamemnon returning to Argos on a river of blood. Apparently, however, this is an entirely appropriate medium of travel for Agamemnon, as the blood of a human sacrifice was what he first set sail on... if I'm understanding this correctly.
Either this play can be very vague in places, or I shouldn't have stayed up until 3:30 AM last night (or maybe both). But if I'm getting the implications of the story correctly, Agamemnon was the king who sacrificed his own daughter to have the favor of the gods when he first set sail for war against Troy. Now, my memory of this is pretty rusty, but wasn't the Trojan War originally started to reclaim a different woman taken by Troy? Let's throw some utilitarianism into this, because it's ultimately behind a lot of interesting debates, like Thanos in Infinity War. For the sake of one woman, we're going to sacrifice a different woman and then wage a ten-year war that brings physical and psychological distress to every solider on the front and civilian at home. ...Why? Did the Greek rulers start off thinking things would be easy and then fall into the trap of winning the war at all costs for the sake of their pride? And even if that were so, why the heck are they sacrificing girls at the drop of a hat before the fighting even starts? Pleasing the gods is important for them, I'm aware, but when you're taking a life--the life of the king's daughter, no less--to boost your chances of saving a life, why not try to find an alternative to war first? The entire war in this play is just that annoying trolley car riddle: do you put the trolley on the tracks that your lover is tied to alone, or the tracks that ten innocent strangers are tied to?
This isn't to say, of course, that I wouldn't get the boys together to try to save someone I loved if something crazy like this ever happened. But murdering one of the boys right at the start to "make sure" the rest of us would save this person? Yeah, I'm not sailing off to war on a river of blood I created myself.
P.S. I commented on Eliza and AnnaKate’s posts.
Yes, this story was about the closing of a decade-long war. But between the woeful lamenting of the chorus and the torturous combat accounts the herald brought back, the people of Argos have Gilgamesh licked when it comes to despairing wails about the morality of man. Even some of the imagery made me think of death: When Clytemnestra celebrated Agamemnon's return with a red carpet and the words "Let the red stream flow and bear him home" (line 901), that doesn't bring anything to my mind except a vision of Agamemnon returning to Argos on a river of blood. Apparently, however, this is an entirely appropriate medium of travel for Agamemnon, as the blood of a human sacrifice was what he first set sail on... if I'm understanding this correctly.
Either this play can be very vague in places, or I shouldn't have stayed up until 3:30 AM last night (or maybe both). But if I'm getting the implications of the story correctly, Agamemnon was the king who sacrificed his own daughter to have the favor of the gods when he first set sail for war against Troy. Now, my memory of this is pretty rusty, but wasn't the Trojan War originally started to reclaim a different woman taken by Troy? Let's throw some utilitarianism into this, because it's ultimately behind a lot of interesting debates, like Thanos in Infinity War. For the sake of one woman, we're going to sacrifice a different woman and then wage a ten-year war that brings physical and psychological distress to every solider on the front and civilian at home. ...Why? Did the Greek rulers start off thinking things would be easy and then fall into the trap of winning the war at all costs for the sake of their pride? And even if that were so, why the heck are they sacrificing girls at the drop of a hat before the fighting even starts? Pleasing the gods is important for them, I'm aware, but when you're taking a life--the life of the king's daughter, no less--to boost your chances of saving a life, why not try to find an alternative to war first? The entire war in this play is just that annoying trolley car riddle: do you put the trolley on the tracks that your lover is tied to alone, or the tracks that ten innocent strangers are tied to?
This isn't to say, of course, that I wouldn't get the boys together to try to save someone I loved if something crazy like this ever happened. But murdering one of the boys right at the start to "make sure" the rest of us would save this person? Yeah, I'm not sailing off to war on a river of blood I created myself.
P.S. I commented on Eliza and AnnaKate’s posts.
The Iphegenia story showed that the Greeks had angered the goddess Artemis. I can't remember exactly how. She called on the god of the winds to prevent the people from going to war. The only way to allow the winds to blow once more was the sacrifice of a virgin. And that my friend is how our tale begins.
ReplyDeleteEither we're both sleep deprived, or you're completely correct in your observation that this play is pretty vague sometimes. I feel that a lot of the meaning is lost since we're simply studying a script, and it was never meant to be analyzed in this format. It was meant to be seen on a stage. Also, the red carpet imagery was really...jarring in my opinion. Agamemnon seems to be truly infamous for bloodshed, and I'm not really sure how I feel about him yet.
ReplyDelete