Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
agamemnon as a tragedy
agamemnon as a tragic play
agamemnon as a tragic play
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: agamemnon as a tragedy
Revenge and Violence in Cassandra
In "Mycenae Lookout," Seamus Heaney tells the story of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Cassandra after the Trojan war. "Cassandra" is the second part of "Mycenae Lookout" and chronicles Cassandra, Apollo's ill-fated prophetess, who is captured by Agamemnon at the war's end and brought back to Mycenae as a slave. The fates of Cassandra and the House of Atreus collide with Agamemnon's return to Mycenae, where his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus plot his murder. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra both seek revenge: Clytemnestra for her daughter's sacrifice and Aegisthus for the overthrow of his father and the sins of Agamemnon's father Atreus, of which Aegisthus was the only survivor. While Heaney probably drew from many classical sources for his poem, the section entitled "Cassandra" seems especially drawn from Aeschylus' play Agamemnon. Heaney compresses the events of Agamemnon into a mere 64 lines but still retains, partially through uses of the binaries which are contained in the play, the classic and timeless story of revenge and a violent vicious circle.
"Cassandra" begins with Cassandra's description. She is described as a prisoner of war might look, "soiled" (4), "devastated" (6-7) and "camp-fucked" (12), rather than marble smooth and serene, as one might expect a classical Greek figure to appear. Heaney focuses on her appearance and describes her clothing, "her little breasts" and the state of her head in lines four through ten. It is not until he gets to line 11, though, that he comments on what may have happened to her as a prisoner of the Trojan War. "Camp-fucked," with its feel of sexual violence, implies that, along with physical abuse and enslavement, Cassandra has endured rape as well (12). In lines eight through thirteen, Heaney chooses words, such as "punk," "char-eyed" and "gawk" to illustrate succinctly Cassandra's position in the House of Atreus: she is an alien, traumatized by the destruction she has witnessed and stunned to awkwardness by her descent from princess of Troy to slave of Mycenae.
The speaker says, "People / could feel / a missed / trueness" in Cassandra (14-17). This paragraph comes to a point with the word "focus," which is used as a verb.
Athletes do not always get in trouble, but when they do some athletes tend to have favoritism shown to them by the law enforcement. When it comes to athletes that break the law, one major viewpoint is that some athletes tend to get special treatment when they commit crimes because they are famous, but with harsher consequences. Athletes are supposed to be role models for younger kids who look up to them, but they are getting in trouble and causing controversy for all the wrong reasons and it is affecting their careers, the athletes might not think that it is because of the favoritism that law enforcement shows them, but it is. When athletes do commit crimes law enforcement tends to be bias toward them because they are known around the world (Withers). Therefore, this causes a lot of controversy surrounding the athlete because many people believe that they do not get disciplined like they should.
Odysseus and Agamemnon are heroes who fought side by side to take down the city of Troy during the Trojan War. In Homer’s The Odyssey, why is Agamemnon slaughtered when he arrives home while Odysseus returns to find his loved ones still waiting for him? The reasons for the heroes’ differing fates are the nature of their homecoming and the loyalty of their wives.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is well known for being an excellent writer, for expertly describing the Jazz Age, and for having a drinking problem. However, he is not so well known for creating deep and intriguing characters. In The Great Gatsby, the majority of the characters remain one-dimensional and unchanging throughout the novel. They are simply known from the viewpoint of Nick Carraway, the participating narrator. Some insight is given into characters in the form of their dialogue with Nick, however, they never really become deep characters that are 'known' and can be identified with. While all of the participants in the novel aren't completely flat, most of the main characters are simply stereotypes of 1920's people from the southern, western, and eastern parts of America.
The Greeks, as portrayed by Homer, are a very vengeful people. Throughout The Odyssey, a theme of vengeance is dominant. These displays of retribution come from different entities for fairly different reasons. So why is revenge such a factor in The Odyssey? Fear and the overwhelming feeling of payback are two answers. Homer gives numerous examples of how certain characters demonstrate their power in a fury of rage. He writes of the payback Zeus gives to those who break the rules, of Poseidon’s hatred towards Odysseus, and of Odysseus’s revenge to those who have dishonored his home.
The use of illegal substances in sports is a trendy topic in today’s society. In the last few years a copious amount of players have been under the spotlight of substance abuse, which led to a punishment for their actions. Andrew Sullivan wrote an article in the year 2004 called “In a Drugged-up Nation, the Steroid Sports Star is King”, in which he illustrates how these “pharmaceuticals” have revolutionized sports around the world but mostly in America. These drugs have had a large influence in the overall performance of the players, even if it the use of drugs is “often denied or simply overlooked”(Sullivan 1), it will lead to a lack of judgment in what is right and what is wrong.
In these stories one of the most serious issues plaguing Chicago is crime. Crime in the article The Coldest Case: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is seen as the most amazing crime in Chicago’s amazing criminal history (Eig). Larson illustrates a scene of crime as he says, “He spotted mutilated bodies on the floor and inhaled the stench of blood. That is not the only historical issue plaguing Chicago for crime, but the book For the Thrill of it by Simon Baatz also explains its crime background. Baat...
In The Unvanquished by William Faulkner, the theme of revenge appears throughout the story. Primarily, Bayard and Ringo avenge the death of Rosa Millard, their grandmother. By violently shooting the sociopath Grumby, Granny’s killer, their revenge is wrought through the traditional Southern form of closure, bringing about the death of the killer and avenging the victim. Next, Drusilla, Bayard’s cousin, displays revenge by joining Colonel Sartoris of the Confederate army in order to avenge the death of her fiancé. By joining the Confederates, Drusilla gains the opportunity to kill the Yankee soldiers responsible for her fiancé’s death in battle. Finally, Bayard exacts vengeance upon Redmond for murdering Colonel John Sartoris, Bayard’s father. However, Bayard achieves his goal of seeking revenge in a nonviolent way, avoiding killing anyone, breaking the traditional Southern code of revenge. Each character struggles with the necessity to avenge the death of their loved ones, seeking the ultimate, most appropriate punishment for the murderer who harms their family.
Olsen, S. D. "The Stories of Agamemnon in Homer's Odyssey." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 120 (1990): 57-71. JSTOR. Web. .
The Great Gatsby was a major success in Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s writing career. With more failures than successes, Fitzgerald’s determination to achieve a best seller had become a reality by reason of The Great Gatsby published 1996. The novel is written with many twists and hidden mysteries. Nick Carraway, a young and said to be attractive man, finds himself mentally captivated by Jay Gatsby, his neighbor who is seen to live this wild lifestyle. Carraway receives an invitation to one of Gatsby’s parties. Intrigued by Gatsby’s ambitious lifestyle, Nick attends. Although seeming to be wild and overwhelming, he realizes something about this atmosphere seems phony. Nobody knew the real Gatsby; most guests couldn’t identify him if he was standing right next to him. Taken back by all that is happening around him, Nick is determined to find this Gatsby everyone speaks so highly about, but no one really knew. Further on Gatsby’s side, his heart ached for Daisy Buchanan. Married to Tom Buchanan with a child, it was not as easy to love him as it was for him to love her. Gatsby truly believed Daisy never loved Tom, and pressed for her to admit it throughout the novel. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the concept of the cliché upper class living in the 1920’s along with the act of illegal importing; this thematic structure of the text parallels the concept of the American Dream and hustling in current popular culture and for this reason the text is a classic still read and respected today.
In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon there are many different opinions about what kind of king and commander Agamemnon was. Some argued that he was good, while others dispute that his motives were wrong. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, gained a strong hatred for him, after he sacrificed his own daughter so he could go to war. Many believe that this was not necessary and could have been overcome. The chorus seems to agree with this to an extent, and feels that Agamemnon could have prayed and requested that he not sacrifice his daughter.
In Aeschylus’s, Agamemnon, there is a great possibility that the death of Agamemnon could have been prevented, had the Chorus simply listened to Cassandra’s prophecy. But the words spoken between the two parties seem to have loss it’s meaning when it fell upon the Chorus; yet, they were obviously hearing what she was saying. But while they were hearing what she had to say, they did not listen to her words. Ironically, in this story, it is the women who posses all the knowledge. But once they try to share it, the men, who later suffer the consequence, ignore them. People only listen to what they want to hear, and a woman’s word is not considered important enough to listen to.
Menelaos' brother, Agamemnon, does not have a healthy family relationship. His family is held up to everyone as what a family should not be. It is ironic that the marriages of two brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaos, to two sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra, should be such exact opposite in their outcome. During his absence during the Trojan War, Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, took a lover, Aigisthos. Upon Agamemnon's return, Clytemnestra kills him and his slave-mistress, Cassandra.
Clytemnestra has the ten years of the Trojan War to plan her revenge on Agamemnon. Upon his return Clytemnestra shows him some love. That love she showed quickly changes to rage and hatred when Clytemnestra she’s Agamemnon with his mistress Cassandra.
Smith, Chris. "Why It's Time To Legalize Steroids In Professional Sports." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 24 Aug. 2012. Web. 05 Jan. 2014. .
The main characters in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon formulate two different narratives about the death of their daughter, Iphigenia. As a result of their stories and coping mechanisms being different, the unity of their home is disrupted. Like most stories with multiple authors there are discrepancies, exaggerations, disregarded information, and changes in the way the story is told in order to support the narrators’ agenda. In Agamemnon, Aeschylus reveals through the transformed relationship between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon-as a result of the death of Iphigenia-that when marital partners have discrepancies in shared personal memories that their ideas of home and homecoming are also inconsistent.