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Must They Continuously Involve Themselves - Clabo

All that I can say about The Eumenides initially is that there is so much wrong with it. With very poor views of women, a vengeful "mother," gods who never cease to intervene in in anything and everything, and furies that for some reason decide to want to enact vengeance upon Orestes for the same crime that his mother had just committed against Agamemnon, what worse could be in this play. I have had issues with the lack of impartiality amongst the gods since the start of this semester in honors. You would think that somewhat all-powerful beings would be wise enough to know that their decisions will heavily impact the mortal world. I also hate the fact that Apollo and Orestes basically say that it was okay to kill his mother because she wasn't really his mother. I find that view and perspective of motherhood very disrespectful. I mean, to say that someone isn't a mother when they are one of the two people that brought a person into this world is very offensive to me. 

One thing that I also couldn't grasp was why the furies decided to avenge Clytemnestra when she had just done the same thing to her husband. You would think that the furies would side with Orestes being that they are the deities of vengeance. 

Does anyone have any similar thoughts or opinions? What are your thoughts?

P.S. I commented on Abigale Bell's and Hailey Morgan's posts. 

Comments

  1. Rachael GregsonSeptember 21, 2020 at 5:01 PM

    Jacob, you posed a very important question that I didn't catch while reading this. It is very fishy that the Furies stayed quiet during Agamemnon's murder, but decided to speak up when the mother got killed in return. I mean, I guess you could say he had it coming to him. You don't just sacrifice your kid and think your wife's going to still love you after that. Does Orestes not care more about his dead sister?

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  2. Jackson RiddleSeptember 21, 2020 at 10:08 PM

    The gender equality issue was something that immediately jumped out to me, but I didn't consider the fact that the Furies stayed silent when Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon while jumping on Orestes. It seems like men view women as lesser (Apollo argues with the Furies that men's lives are more important than women's) and women occasionally try to defend the idea that they're as important as men. It's a whole sexist thing going on, blah.

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  3. kaitlyn terrySeptember 21, 2020 at 10:49 PM

    I totally agree on your feeling about the way Apollo and Orestes viewed motherhood. They totally disregard how essential a mother is to a child's development. They used Athena as an example, but failed to realize that she still had maternal figures in her life. It was incredibly infuriating to read.

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  4. Hailey MorganSeptember 22, 2020 at 8:33 AM

    I did think it was funny that the Furies were so intent on raining down revenge on Orestes, even though Clytemnestra had just murdered her husband! However, with all that we now know about the Greeks, this line of continuous bloodshed is almost typical. The Greeks weren’t ever able to forgive and forget, only doing so when the goddess, Athena, blatantly instructs it. Since the Furies seemed to be pretty autonomous to being with, I felt as though they were merely fulfilling their basic desire for vengeance through Orestes ongoing family feud. They acted much as a computer or a robot would, just following their programming.

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