Niobe
As a preface for the tragedy, the crime committed by Tantalus should be staged first. The killing of Pelops by Tantalus, his father, serving him to the gods will be the beginning of Niobe’s tragedy. After these events, Niobe becomes unusually fixated with being a mother. After having 12 children, seven daughters and 7 sons, she swears to the gods that she’ll never hurt her children as her father attempted with his own; and that she wants to dedicate her life to become the best mother to exist ever. Niobe is having a recurrent dream with a spider, which is in fact weaving a net around her; she goes to the Oracle to find out the significance of the dream. As a response, the Oracle tells her that the spider represents her obsession with her children, whom are not part of the gods’ realm and hence should be subjects of adoration. The spider really represents Arachnae and her fate after challenging Athena. Niobe doesn’t understand the Oracle and feels that even the gods are jealous of her fortune. During a celebration in Leto’s honor, she claimed that she deserved more worship than Leto as she was the daughter of a god, a queen as had seven times more offspring than Leto. She even dismissed the celebration; the worshippers leave.
After this, which could be the beginning of act 2; Leto gets angry due to Niobe’s actions and tells her children how this could mean that no disciple would want to worship her. Apollo and Artemis take care of the issue shooting all of Niobe’s children. Amphion, Niobe’s husband commits suicide leaving Niobe all alone. After this she is changed into stone, and flew, carried by a gust of wind; to her home in Lydia where she was stuck onto the peak of a mountain and is still there weeping.
In this essay I will examine the war-of the-sexes taking place in The Eumenides, the final play of The Oresteia. The plot of The Eumenides pits Orestes and Apollo (representing the male gods and, to a certain extent, male values in general) against the ghost of Clytemnestra and the Furies (equally representative of female values.) Of more vital importance, however, is whether Athene sides with the males or females throughout the play.
For example, Dido fled Tyre and founded Carthage because of a dream. Her husband, Sychaeus, warned her that his brother Pygmalion became greedy and murdered him for the gold in the altar and was looking to kill her too. Helpfully, Sychaeus also informs Dido about the location of the treasure that she can use in her journey to escape Tyre and found a new colony. Her prior history of love and her distrust in other men was a prominent section of her personality before she met Aeneas, and their romantic relationship, caused by the scheming of Venus and Juno, demonstrates the futility of the efforts of men in the face of the power of gods and that the mortals are merely pawns in the great game of the gods. Another example of character development from dreams occurs at the beginning of Book 8 when Aeneas dreams of Tiberinus, the river god of the Tiber. The god first tells Aeneas about the future site of Alba, a city which his son Ascanius will found. Then, Tiberinus informs Aeneas about the Arcadians and their king Evander who continuously fights against the Latins, and recommends that he allies with them although they are Greek colonists. Thus, the relationship between Aeneas and Evander was initiated, which would become vital to the war effort between the Trojans and the Latins. In addition to this advice from Tiberinus, he prophesies about a white sow suckling thirty young piglets marking the site for Alba, Ascanius’ future city. Prophecies are a common theme in dreams in the Aeneid, and it also appears in Dido’s story and Aeneas’ vision of Hector. The involvement of the divine in dreams to advise characters is omnipresent throughout the Aeneid, and an example of that occurs in Book 3, when the Trojan colonists arrived on Crete, set up a new colony, but it started failing due to starvation and disease. During this failure, the penates appear to Aeneas and clarify
Euripdies' The Bacchae is known for its celebration of women's rebellion and patriarchial overthrow, claims which hold truth if not supremely. The Thebans, along with other women, pursue the rituals and culture of Dionysus’s cult which enacts their rebellion against men and the laws of their community. However, this motion to go aginst feminine norms is short lived as they lose power. When Agave comes to her epiphany, Dionysus is the one who is triumphant over Pentheus's death, not Agave or her sisters These women must be punished for their rebellion against both men and community. This female power is weakened and the rebellion muted in order to bring back social order and also to provide the story with a close. Female rebellion actually becomes oppressed through The Bacchae due to its conseqences and leading events of the play. This alludes to the message that women who do not follow traditional roles of femininity are subject to the destruction of an established society.
The image of seductresses is a recurring motif in The Odyssey. These women are a temptation to Odysseus. They attempt to keep Odysseus from accomplishing his goal: his homecoming. Circe is a bewitching goddess. She entices Odysseus’ crew into her palace with her enchanting voice. However, after she feeds them, she promptly turns them into pigs. Circe also succeeds in enticing Odysseus; he stays with her one year as her lover. It is so long that his crew declares that it is “madness” (326). They say that it is “high time” that Odysseus thinks of his homeland (326). Later on, Odysseus and his crew encounter the sirens. Knowing the danger they pose, Odysseus has all his men’s ears stopped up with wax. However, Odysseus wishes to hear their song; so he asks his crew to tie him to the mast. The song of the sirens is so sweet and enticing. Their “ravishing voices” almost make Odysseus forget his desire to return home (349). His heart “throbbed” to listen longer; he signals for his men to let him go free. The grea...
Even though the sexual aspects of a woman are one of the more influential, there are always the main examples of woman kind; usually pertaining to their roles as mothers. In both of these stories we have the extremes of women the mother. There is the wise and caring mother, Ninsun. Then there is the evil, Medea herself.
Shamat is a mortal, Ninsun is a minor goddess and a mother, and Ishtar is a major goddess, all three are women of different social status and because of that they all illustrate their maternal traits in a different
During her speech, Aphrodite states her plan which inevitably comes true. She tells: “this young man, this enemy of mines, shall be driven to his death by his father’s curses: something made possible by the three wishes granted Theseus by Poseidon, king of the sea…I must exact from those who do me wrong.” (Hippolytus 49-50). Aphrodite’s desire to punish those who disrespect her without any care for the lives she destroys in the process, illustrates her apparent abuse of power. Her elaborate scheming which uses Theseus and Phaedra without their will in her expedition to obliterate Theseus, is careless in nature and extremely ungodlike. What Aphrodite believes is justice is more so a medium through which she is able to exert her power as a god and satisfy her ego
The power and influence of women is symbolized in Odysseus’ encounter with the dead in Hades. In the Underworld, Odysseus meets more women than men. He meets his mother and then a “grand array of women” (334). They all were “wives and daughters once of princes” (334). All of them are the legendary women who were the mothers of the greatest Greek lineages. This symbolizes how Greek civilization was founded by women; they were the ones who gave birth to the heroes. Similarly, The Odyssey is a story created by women. The plot revolves around the actions of women. Athena orchestrates all the events. The seductresses, such as Circe, the sirens, and Calypso, attempt to stop Odysseus from reaching home. The helpmeets, such as Nausicaa, Arete, and Athena, aid Odysseus in his homecoming. The wise and virtuous Penelope is the object of Odysseus’ quest. Unlike Helen who forsakes her husband, Penelope remains faithful. Unlike Clytemnestra who assassinates her husband, Penelope patiently waits for Odysseus. She becomes a model of female patience and of female intelligence. Her craftiness is the only one which can match up to Odysseus’. The Odyssey presents a wide array of women and demonstrates the influence that women have in the life of a
The main suspense that is built throughout the poem is whether Penelope will remain loyal to Odysseus. Another man had seduced Klytemnestra while her husband was at war. Anxiety is developed as to whether the poem will turn out differently or the fate of Agamemnon would also be that of Odysseus. However, this is not the only source of the anxiety, even the gods for whom the mortals pay tribute is capable of adultery.
Nettie was wanted by Mister because she was beautiful, her father wanted to get rid of Celie because she was the ugly, spoiled one. Celie believes she is ugly until Shug forces her to face her beauty, her smile, and her strength but still the Mister wanted to get rid of her. The reason Shug can get away is through her voice, her talent, and her attractiveness. But in The Odyssey some women are known for the deeds of their sons or husbands, and never for a heroic deed of their own, their personalities, what they do themselves. The only accomplishment women could achieve was being beautiful. Penelope, Odysseus ' queen, is paid attention to only because of her position. Because she has a kingdom, she has suitors crowding around her day and night. Being a woman, Penelope has no control over what the suitors do and cannot get rid of them. The suitors want her wealth and her kingdom. They do not respect her enough to stop feeding on Odysseus ' wealth; they feel she owes them something because she won 't marry one of them. One of the suitors, tells Telemachus "...but you should know the suitors are not to blame- it is your own incomparably cunning mother "(Homer 21). Even Telemachus doesn 't respect his mother as he should. When the song of a minstrel makes her sad and Penelope requests him to stop playing, Telemachus interrupts and
Death is the end to the natural cycle of life and is represented as dark, melancholic and even menacing. The underworld is depicted as a murky and sinister realm where the dead are trapped in a world of eternal darkness. Ancient drama, however, defies the conventional perceptions and representations of death. Despite the foreboding associated with it, characters in ancient drama embrace death in its frightening glory, rather than face the repercussions of their actions, especially when their honor and pride are at stake. Deceit is also an integral part of ancient drama and characters, particularly women, fall prey to it and unwittingly unleash chaos that more often that, negatively impacts the lives of the characters. This paper demonstrates how gender biases can be interpreted from the depiction of death and the characters’ justifications of it in two of Sophocles’ plays – Ajax and Women of Trachis and also demonstrates how female deception leads to the death of the principal character(s).
The mythical event represents the Greek hero Oedipus confronted by the Sphinx outside the kingdom of Thebes. Oedipus must solve the Sphinx’s riddle in order to live. (Morford, Lenardon, and Sham 422). The painted image shows the fallen victims who previously tried and failed to answer the riddle correctly. The myth behind the painting starts with a son that was born to Queen Jocasta and King Laius of Thebes (Morford, Lenardon, and Sham 420). The oracle told King Laius that a child born to him would grow up, murder him, and marry his own mother. (Morford, Lenardon, and Sham 420). In order to avoid this fate, King Laius ordered the child to the elements on Mount Cithaeron with a spike through his ankles. (Morford, Lenardon, and Sham 420). A servant ordered with this request, felt sympathy for the child and left him with a Corinthian shepherd, who then presented the child to King
Negritude is a term that may not be used very often but is significant; by definition it is a cultural word that represents “black” culture. The term is looked at deeply within the novel from Edwidge Danticat The Farming of Bones. This novel goes into depth on the strengths and weakness of the concept of Negritude through the culture and lives of Haitian and Dominican people. The novel circulates around a few major themes these being birth, death, identity, and place and displacement. An inanimate object represents each of the aspects. Water, birth, death, and masks make up these symbols. Haitians are known for speaking’s a more French Spanish in comparison to Dominican’s that at the time seemed to cause a great ordeal to Generalissimo Trujillo. The novel The Farming of Bones it displays the language of the Haitians versus the Dominican’s it displays the limitations of negritude through many different sugar cane field workers and the major constraints they had. Negritude as well has strength and limits and Edwidge Danticat’s Novel helps makes pros and cons clearer. Through the Novel Danticat shows how Negritude is not a negative word and the strengths and come along with Negritude.
...y sirens represent half-women, half-bird creatures who lived on an island. They used to sing in beautiful voices to lure sailors off their course. When Odysseus was sailing by the siren's island, he made the rest of his men plug up their ears and ties him to the mainmast. This way, he got to hear the beautiful sound of their voice without being driven to suicide. In this story the women weeping over Lautaro were compared to the sirens, and some sailors going to tie themselves to the mainmast in an attempt to mimic Odysseus. There is a contrast of these stories with the quotes from the villagers.
One of the tragedies in this play is that Agamemnon kills his own daughter. When the gods demanded her life in exchange for the wind to sail to Troy to war, Agamemnon kills his own daughter as a sacrifice. Although it does not take place in the story of Agamemnon, (it takes place in the Iliad, another Greek tragedy) this is referenced throughout the story of Agamemnon. “Yes, he had the heart to sacrifice his daughter, to bless the war that avenged a woman’s loss, a bridal rite that sped the men-of-war.” (Lines 223-226)