Electra

“As for me —

what harm can it do

to die in words?

I save my life and win glory besides!

Can a mere story be evil? No, of course not —

so long as it pays in the end.

I know of shrewd men who die a false death

so as to come home all the more valued.

Yes, I am sure:

I will stand clear of this lie

and break on my enemies like a star.”

In order to avenge his father Agamemnon, Orestes decides to “die in words”—or rather, he charges Paedagogus with lying to his family about his death. The power of speech will manipulate others’ perception of reality throughout the play. Light imagery is also evoked, with Orestes comparing himself to a star—such imagery capturing other characters’ future shock upon realizing the prince’s true identity.

“Like the nightingale who lost her child

I will stand in his doorway

and call on his name.

Make them all hear.

Make this house echo.”

Electra mourns the loss of her father, Agamemnon, who was murdered in the doorway of his own home upon returning from the Trojan War. Her desire to avenge her father’s death is evident, as is her direct opposition to the new house formed by her mother Clytemnestra marrying Aegisthus.

“Why let grief eat you alive?

It was long ago

she took your father:

her hand came out of unholy dark

and cut him down.

I curse the one

who did the deed

(if this is right to say.)”

The Chorus attempts to convince Electra of the needlessness of her suffering. This quote presents a Chorus that directly interacts with the other characters of the play and functions less so as a collective narrator.

“Lament is a pattern cut and fitted around my mind —

like the bird who calls Itys! Itys! Endlessly,

bird of grief,

angel of Zeus.

O heartdragging Niobe,

I count you a god:

buried in rock yet

always you weep.”

Electra references Niobe, a woman punished by the titan-goddess, Leto, for her hubris. Leto’s punishment was to witness the murder of her children and then be turned to stone, forever stuck in a state of lament. Electra mirrors this lament, as she believes grieving to be her only way of being—of rebelling.

“And how could I nestle myself in a life of ease

while my father lies out in the cold,

outside honor?

My cries are wings:

they pierce the cage.

For if a dead man is earth and nothing,

If a dead man is void and dead space lying,

if a dead man’s murderers

do not give

blood for blood

to pay for this,

then shame does not exist.

Human reverence

is gone.”

Electra continually and publically laments the death of her father. Lamenting is introduced as a resistive act against compliance with her mother, Clytemnestra, and the new king Aegisthus. Electra’s strong will and moral compass—common traits in classic Greek heroines—are showcased.

“Here, instead

cut a lock from your hair

and a lock of mine—meagre gifts

but it is all I have.

Take this to him, the hair

and this belt of mine,

though it’s nothing elaborate.

Kneel down there and pray to him.

Pray he come up from the ground

to stand with us against our enemies.”

Electra speaks these lines as she and her two siblings, Orestes and Chrysothemis, each leave a lock of hair at their father’s tomb—illustrating their familial bonds and the continuation of Agamemnon’s bloodline. The headstrong princess foreshadows Agamemnon’s resurrection in the form of Orestes retaking the throne of Mycenae.

“Unless I am utterly wrong in my reading of omens

unless I am out of my mind

Justice is coming

with clear signs before her

and righteousness in her hands.

She is coming down on us, child, coming now!

There is courage

whispering into me

when I hear tell of these sweetbreathing dreams.”

Justice is personified, making the virtue all the more human and immediate. The Chorus uses Justice to foretell Electra and Orestes’s vengeance.

“Father, father, father! Your perpetual excuse —

your father got his death from me. From me! That’s right!

I make no denial.

It was Justice who took him, not I alone.

And you should have helped if you had any conscience.”

Clytemnestra defends her murder of Agamemnon. Not only does she take full responsibility for the act but believes it to be just. Justice is personified again, being framed as having had an active role in Agamemnon’s death. To the queen, Justice was recompense for the king’s murder of their daughter Iphigenia (for the sake of appeasing the titan-goddess Leto).

“He resisted, hated it —

and then he killed her.

Not for Menelaus’ sake, no, not at all.

But even if—let’s say we grant your claims —

he did these things to help his brother,

was it right he should die for it at your hands?”

Electra responds to her mother’s defense of the murder, stating that the difference between her and her father is that Agamemnon felt remorse when he sacrificed Iphigenia—whereas Clytemnestra feels no shame.

“I am at the end. I exist no more.”

Upon learning of Orestes’s fake death from Paedagogus (who has grown unrecognizable in his old age), Electra loses hope for revenge. Without Orestes, Electra feels as if she no longer exists, as she will live the rest of her life lamenting her father and brother.

“To give birth is terrible, incomprehensible.

No matter how you suffer,

you cannot hate a child you’ve born.”

Clytemnestra reduces motherhood and the right to one’s children to the pain of childbirth. While she is saddened at the loss of another one of her children, she ultimately rejoices Orestes’s inability to avenge his father’s death.

“Orestes beloved,

as you die you destroy me.

You have torn away the part of my mind

where hope was —

my hope in you

to live,

to come back,

to avenge us.

Now where can I go?

Alone I am.”

Electra laments her and Orestes’s lost bond. The siblings are connected in life and in death, if only figuratively. Without Orestes, Electra believes she will be forever paralyzed in her state of grief.

“Take on your father’s work,

take up your brother’s task,

make some refuge from evil for me

and for you.

Because you know,

there is a kind of excellence

in me and you—born in us —

and it cannot live in shame.”

Electra attempts to convince her sister Chrysothemis to take on their brother’s deed (avenging their father), showcasing the strength of their bloodline despite Chrysothemis’s caution.

“Be careful: this sort of blundering

might make things worse for us —

what if someone overhears!

And there is nothing whatever to win or to gain

if we make ourselves famous and die in disgrace.

Death itself is not the worst thing.

Worse is to live

When you want to die.

So I beg you,

before you destroy us

and wipe out the family altogether,

control your temper.”

Chrysothemis understands that she is not the one to take Agamemnon or Orestes’s place on the throne. However, her reasoning stems more so from logic than belief in their bloodline. Her strong sense of reason ultimately renders her unable to act.

“One day three people vanished.

 Father. You. Me. Gone.”

Electra speaks of the day she charged Paedagogus with an infant Orestes. When Agamemnon was killed, Orestes was given away, and Electra experienced a figurative death in losing both her father and brother. The death of one family member directly affects the others.

“Hush, now. That language is wrong.”

Orestes comforts a distraught Electra when she fails to recognize him and thinks her brother’s ashes are about to be taken away. When she addresses the ashes as Orestes, she is corrected by the living Orestes standing before her. The power of language gives way to real, spontaneous action.

“Oh love, you break on me like light!”

This quote harkens back to Orestes’s initial statement that he will break on his enemies like a star (Important Quote #2). Light imagery is always associated with Orestes resurrecting himself with words.

“Every arriving moment of my life

has a right

to tell those deeds!

And this chance to speak freely is hard won.”

Electra reiterates that choice of language and speech are powerful agents—as the ability to speak freely is to control another’s perception.

“But how could silence be the right way to greet

you—simply

coming

out of nowhere

like a miracle?”

Electra is still shocked by Orestes’s sudden transformation from stranger to brother. It is truly a miracle insofar as she believed him to be dead and witnessed a metamorphosis.

“Your will and my will are one: identical, brother.

For I take all my joy from you,

none is my own.

Nor could I harm you ever so slightly

at any price: it would be a disservice

to the god who stands beside us now.”

Electra references the unbreakable bond between brother and sister again. Orestes is symbolic of hope—specifically, the future of Agamemnon’s bloodline.

“Now cut short the speechmaking,

Stifle your joy

and go in the house. Go!

Delay is disaster in things like this.

Get it over with: that’s the point now.”

Paedagogus arrives on the scene to keep the siblings’ plan on track and progress the plot once more. His character is wise and symbolizes the importance of deliberate action, not just speechmaking.

“Look where he comes grazing forward,

blood bubbling over his lips: Ares!

As a horizontal scream into the house

go hunters of evil,

the raw and deadly dogs.

Not long now:

the blazing dream of my head is crawling out.”

The Chorus references Ares, the god of war. As such, he is the undoing of a bloodline. In Orestes’s murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, he simultaneously destroys their bloodline and preserves his.

“I’m a dead man. No way out.

But let me just say—”

Aegisthus proclaims his own death in words; Orestes and Electra also verbally condemn him to death before he is physically killed. The king appears to understand this condemnation and attempts to use language to save himself, but is refused by Electra.