The Most Honorable of Honors Topics about Honor -Will Brady
Dad murders sister. Mom doesn't like that, so she murders dad. Brother doesn't like that, so he murders mom. If there is ever an odd trait that you could say runs in the family, it's murder. There are no clean hands in this bloodline--Orestes becomes exactly what his mother is by murdering her. The apple has landed right at the roots of the tree, so let's talk about that. How does the ancient Honor System work with this messed-up crew? When dad kills daughter, honor is lost. Mother kills father to restore honor. Son kills mother and... where do we go from there? How subjective is the Honor System? Killing Agamemnon restores Honor in Clytemnestra's eyes, but not Orestes', because Orestes never thought honor was lost when his sister was murdered?
There are several directions I could go with this. We can bring up sexism, considering that Mom sides with sister and son sides with Father because son and Father both think the women don't have honor to be lost in the first place. Or we could start deconstructing the absurdity of honor as a judiciary code and point out that the entire family just descends into animalistic savagery and destroys itself (kudos to Electra for not being a bloodthirsty savage, however). How do you measure honor, anyway? Is it public or private? If Agamemnon had sacrificed Iphigenia without anyone but Clytemnestra knowing (and behaved more faithfully while off at war), would honor have been lost and would Clytemnestra have gone on her murder streak? The public, of course, seems to be in favor of Orestes killing Clytemnestra, but how do they determine that Agamemnon didn't lose honor by failing to provide for his daughter?
Finally, how does restoring honor within the family work when the honor is lost to members of that family? We can say that eliminating dishonorable Agamemnon restores honor, but we again return to the questions of whether Agamemnon dishonored the family in the first place, whether Clytemnestra took a higher road by murdering him deceitfully, and how she intends on restoring that honor by murdering poor Casandra as well. If the honor had been lost to some outsider of a different bloodline, it would be a simple matter of beating him/his family in a feud to become an obvious victor. But in this sort of civil war of Agamemnon’s kinfolk, determining the outcome becomes much harder. It becomes a matter of defeating oneself without suffering the consequences of defeat in the public eyes. Again, in the eyes of the ancient Greeks, Orestes seems to have pulled that off at this point in the trilogy—but in the eyes of the rest of history’s readers, is he still looked at the same way?
This is a humungous can of worms and, for those curious, pretty good research paper material. I'm having second thoughts about using The Oresteia for my short paper now...
Sorry Zelda, I win again.
P.S. I commented on Sophia and Dakota’s posts.
There are several directions I could go with this. We can bring up sexism, considering that Mom sides with sister and son sides with Father because son and Father both think the women don't have honor to be lost in the first place. Or we could start deconstructing the absurdity of honor as a judiciary code and point out that the entire family just descends into animalistic savagery and destroys itself (kudos to Electra for not being a bloodthirsty savage, however). How do you measure honor, anyway? Is it public or private? If Agamemnon had sacrificed Iphigenia without anyone but Clytemnestra knowing (and behaved more faithfully while off at war), would honor have been lost and would Clytemnestra have gone on her murder streak? The public, of course, seems to be in favor of Orestes killing Clytemnestra, but how do they determine that Agamemnon didn't lose honor by failing to provide for his daughter?
Finally, how does restoring honor within the family work when the honor is lost to members of that family? We can say that eliminating dishonorable Agamemnon restores honor, but we again return to the questions of whether Agamemnon dishonored the family in the first place, whether Clytemnestra took a higher road by murdering him deceitfully, and how she intends on restoring that honor by murdering poor Casandra as well. If the honor had been lost to some outsider of a different bloodline, it would be a simple matter of beating him/his family in a feud to become an obvious victor. But in this sort of civil war of Agamemnon’s kinfolk, determining the outcome becomes much harder. It becomes a matter of defeating oneself without suffering the consequences of defeat in the public eyes. Again, in the eyes of the ancient Greeks, Orestes seems to have pulled that off at this point in the trilogy—but in the eyes of the rest of history’s readers, is he still looked at the same way?
This is a humungous can of worms and, for those curious, pretty good research paper material. I'm having second thoughts about using The Oresteia for my short paper now...
Sorry Zelda, I win again.
P.S. I commented on Sophia and Dakota’s posts.
The way I see this is all honor is lost in the family. I feel like someone should wipe them out and start over. Maybe this is part of the curse of the House of Atreus? Maybe the curse is that the family is going to ruin its own kind. Every one is so upset about something the other is doing so they result in killing each other. Eventually there is not going to be anyone left in the family to even kill. Because honor is such a big thing during this time, everyone feels like the need to protect it. rather than sexism, this is more selfishness. Everyone wants to have this title; this honor that they make sure no one can take away. This selfishness turns into bitterness and hate which then eventually makes people make harsh decisions.
ReplyDeleteSuppose honor is not subjective but objective. In that case it wouldn't matter if the sacrifice was public or private because it would have been lost either way. If Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon to restore honor that only he could hold as the man, where does honor reside now? In the family name? Also, if Orestes killed his mother to restore that honor that was supposedly already restored, where is it now? Is there double honor or no honor? Or does it cancel out and now honor is perfectly balanced? This is confusing.
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy looking at ancient or historical reading from a social perspective, so the question of sexism is always at the forefront when reading this collection of plays. When reading though the two plays so far, it was always appalling to me how the women were treated as objects and trinkets, in capable of taking matters of justice and honor into their own hands. Aegisthus (Totally misspelled that, sorry.) has to step in for the family's honor to be put in a man again and Electra is relegated in the narrative into nothing more than a grieving girl rather than preforming her own version of justice. It makes sense for the time period, but to modern readers like myself this is something I am almost unable to wrap my head around and takes quite a pill to swallow, because I'm so often expecting the female characters to stand up and restore honor before remembering that they can't -- they don't have any. It's a rather interesting thing to examine, in all honesty.
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