Joey Leung
Founding Voices
In Class Essay: Aeschylus, Prompt #3
14th January 2015
Agamemnon and The Eumenides, Happily Ever After?
Agamemnon and The Eumenides, two great plays of a trilogy in The Oresteia. The endings of both plays have wishful and promising foreshadowings for the events to come.
Agamemnon ended with hope of Clytemnestra restoring the house of Atreus to order and
The Eumenides ended with a happy fairy tale ending, however these endings have lead readers to question if everything will stay the same for long. Both plays lead us to believe that everything will be a perfect happily ever after ending but leaves suspicion to the readers due to the personality of the characters.
Agamemnon ends on a false note of wishful thinking, because we are told
Clytemnestra and Aegisthus can restore order. In this play, we see Clytemnestra as a very devious character and loyal only to Aegisthus which only emphasises her deceitfulness to
Agamemnon. Although we may not know, Clytemnestra has been loyal to Aegisthus from the start of the play and only wish Agamemnon harm when he returns. She still mourns for her daughter and is the unforgiving type. We see Clytemnestra’s full range of power as she plans the murder of her own husband. The intricate details she has forced upon
Agamemnon such as walking on the crimson carpet has shown us what she is capable of. Perhaps she has the ability and mindset to restore order in Argos. However after the elder’s encounter with Cassandra, we know that Clytemnestra will not restore order for long. Before the play ends, we are lead to believe that the ruling of Clytemnestra and
Aegisthus will do good for Argos, only to find out that the death of Agamemnon was only the start of the curse of Atreus.
The Eumenides also ended on a hopeful note, the play ended in a fairy tale like way and it seemed almost too perfect. Through this play, we see
