Word: zeus
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...Orestes returns to Argos with his tutor and discovers the town still guilt ridden over the murder of his father. The town is preparing for its yearly ritual of penance. Orestes watches Electra vent her long standing hostility toward Aegistheus and Clytemnestra, and he begins his own debate with Zeus. Orestes is at this point an intellectual observer--detached, ironic, rational...
...Orestes observes the rite, during which Electra defies Zeus by performing a joyous dance. Just as the town is nearly liberated from its guilt by her own freedom, Zeus makes a sign of his presence, and Electra fails. But her dance nonetheless forces Orestes to murder Aegistheus and Clytemnestra. Aegistheusis too weary of repentence to resist...
...debate between Orestes and Zeus. Zeus attempts to convince the hero to alone for his crimes, and though Electra is convinced of her guilt, Orestes resists. He silences the mob of towns-folk, tells them that he takes upon himself their sins, and, like the pied piper, leads the buzzing swarm of flies from the town...
...redemption of the people. However, unless I sorely misunderstand the play, the surface clarity of structure disguises a number of deep philosophic muddles. Electra assures Orestes that by committing his murders, he is merely fulfilling the curse on the House of Atreus; Orestes, on the other hand, assures Zeus that by killing the tyrant he is fulfilling himself. Certainly he never for an instant feels the remorse which Electra's interpretation of his act would make necessary--but Electra does. The play's great weakness is its Second Act, in which Orestes makes his decision, because we never know...
...first auditors of epic poetry, in the time when it was still in a phase of growth, believed quite simply in the reality of the gods, Moore noted. "If you had suggested to one of Homer's heroes that Zeus was a figment of the human imagination, he would have concluded at once that Zeus had reft you of your wits...