Please read Euripides' Andromache for Tuesday's class (October 27).Choose one of the five narrative essentials (plot, character, theme, setting, tone) and compare this play to one of the other tragedies we've read in terms of that "essential." Does Euripides do something particularly impressive with that feature of his story, something that makes you especially like this play? Is there anything in Euripides treatment of this essential that makes you not like this play as much as some of the others?
I have decided to compare Andromache with Oedipus Rex on the essential of character. I think that Oedipus Rex does a great job with weaving the plot and theme together as well as character, but, in my opinion, Andromache does a better job of displaying character. When I read Oedipus Rex I noticed the plot first and foremost; the plot and theme grabbed my attention. Sure there were solid aspects of character, but they weren't so great that I truly picked up on them. Whereas Sophocles wove plot and theme together, Euripides weaves character and theme together with plot coming in as support to the character and theme. I was easily able to decipher just what kind of people the characters were which is something I really appreciate in a play. Honestly, I really like Euripides' handling of character, but I wish the characters didn't all have to be so "bad;" Andromache is the only one with a pure and good character. Other than that, I really liked the display of character.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this play by Euripides. I wasn’t sure what to expect with Andromache. I hadn’t enjoyed Euripides’ Alcestis as much as the previous plays that we read by Aeschylus and Sophocles. I was pleasantly surprised with Andromache. For me, there is a similarity in power of plot between Euripides’ Andromache and Sophocles’ Philoctetes. The plots are not the same of course, but the way that Euripides layered and built the plot for Peleus’ release from his pain connected to losing his son Achilles and then grandson, Neoptolemus, was masterful. I recognize that the play is entitled “Andromache,” but it seems to be more about Peleus’ pain as a father who shouldn’t have to put his heirs to rest. Like that of Philoctetes’, Peleus experiences a great catharsis by being healed and returning to his homeland, Peleus enters into his own peace with Thetis and son Achilles. Euripides does a great job of capturing this moment when a father is faced with burying his sons. This reminds of s scene from The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers when Theoden, the king of Rohan, says to Gandalf, “No parent should have to bury their child.” This type of theme, which Euripides nails, is powerful. Clearly, the echoes of war and loss for families were touched in this play during Andromache’s first presentation. There are some political overtones here for sure.
ReplyDelete-Jonathon Fargher
I would compare Aeschylus Agamemnons characters to Euripides Andromache because they both has such a strong female role. Agamemnons wife Clytemnestra plays such a strong women figure in the play by ruling alone for ten years then killing her husband as soon as he gets home and in Andromache we see the women nature from the conflict between Andromache and Hermione.
ReplyDeleteLindsey Landenberger
I compared Andromache to Oedipus Rex on theme and found them quite similar. They are both tragedies, but Oedipus Rex is quite worse. For Oedipus Rex the story deals with incest, irony. While in Andromache they deal with Andromache Blackmail and slavery. Andromache who was a slave for Achilles’s son Neoptolemus and had a child with him. Neoptolemus later marries a girl named Hermione who dislikes the slave and her child. This kind of reminds me of Abraham’s predicament in Genesis when he bores his wife and servant with children. Eventually Neoptolemus’s family is decimated by a mob and the slave and her child are given freedom. What I think is impressive about the story of Andromache is toning down the tragedy. In plays like Oedipus Rex they don’t have a good ending because spoiler alert the main characters die or are blinded. While in Andromache, Andromache and her child are freed. There aren’t that many “happy endings” in the Greek literature we read, so this is a nice change of pace.
ReplyDeleteMitchell Buller
I think that this play seems really forced. At first it seemed like a typical tragedy we've read and then it just gets more and more erratic. My biggest issue is the characters. We get a story of one throughout the entire play and then towards the end we get five or so more people, all acting on the plot same as Andromache or Hermione. I would say it's just bad writing but I don't think Euripides would simply have bad plot without intending to. The story is a lot better if you consider it as having a point, like an intention. He wants to make Sparta look bad. It seems kind of stitched together and hectic at the end but that's cause I was looking for a plot and not an emotion. I was reading it as a story and not experiencing it as a play. I feel like characters have to develop more in your head, a sort of stereotype (or archetype I suppose), in order for it to makes sense. And we're just not hip to those stereotypes because we're thousands of miles and years away from it to know it innately. If you look at this as a tragedy showing how awful the Spartans (and women I apparently) then it hits its goal exactly. I think that reading these so alienated from the source, and reading instead of watching them, makes us miss out on aspects of it.
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ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Mitch, because according to what I've read so far, this seems like the other Greek tragedies we have already read. the plot may be bad, but i can see that as possibly intentional as potential war-time propaganda. It is likely to be 5th century B.C.E. war Propaganda because when Euripides wrote this play, the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta was likely in full swing. Much like how Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates in his comical play "The Clouds", Euripides is seen Ridiculing Sparta and especially Spartan women. However, there is a happier ending when the slave and her child are freed, but at the cost of Neoptolemus's family. happy endings are rare in original Ancient Greek literature, but they kind of ruin the lesson learned. For example, if a Greek citizen, great or small, ridiculed Zeus himself and didn't suffer the consequences, people would take it seriously and try it themselves. No single action against the gods would go unpunished, but the sum total would be the greatest betrayal since Snape killed Dumbeldore.
ReplyDeleteI would compare the theme of Alcestus to Andromache in both involve someone possibly dying. The way it is approached is quite different as Alcestus's wife dies fairly early, then comes back to life. Andromache's is basically protecting her son from death most of the time. Another common theme recognized here is that in both of these Euripedes plays there is quite a bit of sacrifice. Whether it is Peleus saving Andromache and her son or Andromache doing all in her power to protect her son. Then in Alcestus it is his wife taking the sacrifice for him. I havn't read any other of Euripedes plays, but it seems he likes the audience to learn from the mistakes as well as showing that women are people too.
ReplyDeleteWhen choosing what to compare Andromache to, it was a hard decision to think about. This play is similar to many of the tragedies that we have already read, but in the same way so different too. The one that stuck out most to me was Oedipus Rex. To me, the conflict was the same in a sense. Not that the actual story was the same, but while reading it just gets worse and worse and worse. It gives the reader no sense of a "happy ending". While reading both plays you must also look deeper for the meaning. It doesn't just scream "face the truth" or "these are the effects of war on both parties", you have to look for that and explain it yourself.
ReplyDeleteTabitha Sonne
For some reason Euripides's play Andromache reminds me of Aeschylus's play Agamemnon. Characters I would like to compare are Hermione and Clytemnestra. They both want to kill their husbands and both run off with other men who have both taken part in the murders of their husbands.
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