Check Your Temper

Electra has a problem. Her father, Agamemnon, was murdered by her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s lover, Aegisthus. How should she respond? The whole play is watching Electra try to sort out that question. She is angry and wants revenge on her mother. But, is that really the right way to go here?

Chrysothemis provides the first contrast. If your mother murders your father, on whose side do you stand? Your living mother’s or your dead father’s? What is to be gained by siding with your father? You do have the rest of your life to lead; alienating your mother, the queen, is hardly the way to go. Right?

Then Clytemnestra herself provides the next part of the puzzle. Her husband Agamemnon had murdered their oldest daughter in order to help his brother get back his wayward wife. He sacrificed their daughter on an altar. Now ask yourself, can you really forgive Agamemnon for that? Why would Electra side with the murderer of her oldest sister? Why would Electra expect her mother to just welcome her father back home?

And then, a messenger shows up with the shocking news shows that Electra’s brother, Orestes, has died. (Don’t worry, he isn’t really dead…but Electra believes the report.) Orestes was Electra’s hope for getting revenge. And now he and all her hopes of vengeance are dead.

Put that all together and you have the recipe for showing that Electra needs to set aside her grievances and get on with life. She doesn’t have to swap birthday cards with her mom, but she can at least show enough restraint to get married off to some nice guy from elsewhere in Greece and have a few kids of her own and do her best to make sure none of them are murdered by her husband.

But Electra does not do that. She cannot. The crimes are too great for her to set them all aside. So, when Orestes does show up, she plots with him to kill their mother and her (the mother’s) lover.

The question: When are the crimes so great that the right response is to revolt? I think we can all agree that we should suffer the many minor wrongs in life. Someone annoys you in line at the grocery store and the right response is not to slaughter them at the register. You let it go. But, are there things which are too egregious to ignore? Electra thought so. The American colonists also certainly thought so:

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States….We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States

So far, so good. Both the Declaration of Independence and Electra are dealing with crimes which cannot be overlooked. Revolution in the one case and matricide in the other are perfectly reasonable responses to those atrocities.

Should we use these things as role models for our own lives? Here is where Electra becomes an interesting play. The arguments in favor of forbearance are strong, but Electra is not persuaded. It is entirely possible throughout all of this to have much sympathy for Electra. She is wounded, deeply, and all these rational reasons to ignore those wounds may well not convince you any more than they convince Electra.

The play does not end with Electra deciding to conspire with her brother to exact vengeance, however. It ends with the murders. And when Aegisthus is being murdered, we get this exchange:

Aegisthus: This is my end then. Let me say one word.
Electra: Not one, not one word more,
I beg you, brother. Do not draw out the talking.
When men are in the middle of trouble, when one
is on the point of death, how can time matter?
Kill him as quickly as you can. And killing
throw him out to find such burial as suit him
out of our sights. This is the only thing
that can bring me redemption from
all my past sufferings.

To fully appreciate how shocking what Electra just said is, recall that Sophocles was also the author of Antigone. In that play, Antigone is the heroine, arguing against the cruel villain Creon, who left her brother’s body unburied in the fields where the dogs would eat it. In Antigone, we are meant to be shocked that Creon would be so awful as to leave bodies unburied, a horrible violation of Greek norms. In The Iliad, for example, in the midst of a decade long battle, the warring armies take breaks from the fighting so both sides can recover the dead and properly bury them.

Yet, here is Electra, that person with whom you might have been sympathizing, becoming a cruel monster.

Is that what happens when revenge and revolt sit deeply in your heart? Is that what happens when you lose perspective and decide that the wrongs exceed the bounds of tolerance? Is the temptation to become as bad as the villain the inevitable result of succumbing to temptation of revenge? Electra doesn’t answer those questions, but it does a wonderful job raising them.