book_dragon74's review against another edition
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
flamingo_and_owl_books's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
milli_04's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
yatinarora's review
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
astaa's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
laura96's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed Sophocles' plays far more than those of the other writers of Greek tragedy that we have read so far for my class! His transitions are very smooth and these plays are easy to follow and relate to one another!
paintedverse's review against another edition
4.0
Sadness seems to be a constant presence in my reading life these days. The didacticism and the role fate plays in Greek tragedies, I thought, were not my forte, but sylphs are the proof, how deeply I am in love with them now. The Theban Plays has been a great start for Greek tragedies. The helplessness and the doomed lives consistently made their presence felt.
The Theban Plays is essentially a collection of three plays by Sophocles: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (sequentially). When I started reading the plays, with the help of a background of Greek theatre that I had, I was transported to Sophocles' time. I was one of the audiences in Dionysia and by Jove, it was the best reading experience for me as far as reading a play is concerned. Perhaps this is the reason why a background study is so important. It adds on to our reading experience.
Coming back to the plays, in Greek tragedies, fate plays a very important role. If an oracle tells that a person is doomed, no power in the world can rescue that person from his (her) fate. Action or no action, fate ultimately prevails, and human beings have no say in it. Similar is the case with Oedipus. An oracle tells that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Hence begins a journey that most of us are quite aware of.
The Theban Plays is essentially a collection of three plays by Sophocles: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (sequentially). When I started reading the plays, with the help of a background of Greek theatre that I had, I was transported to Sophocles' time. I was one of the audiences in Dionysia and by Jove, it was the best reading experience for me as far as reading a play is concerned. Perhaps this is the reason why a background study is so important. It adds on to our reading experience.
Coming back to the plays, in Greek tragedies, fate plays a very important role. If an oracle tells that a person is doomed, no power in the world can rescue that person from his (her) fate. Action or no action, fate ultimately prevails, and human beings have no say in it. Similar is the case with Oedipus. An oracle tells that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Hence begins a journey that most of us are quite aware of.
dilby's review against another edition
“You must remember / That no one lives a life / Free from pain and suffering.”
Maybe it’s the fact that I just read Paul’s other book, or maybe it’s his very lucid translation for Hackett—probably both, honestly—but I have to say that I felt the intensity and human drama and thematic urgency of these plays more than ever before. The concept of hubris, which until now has seemed prescriptive and Aristotelian, has finally registered for me as the ur-anxiety arising from our species’s primordial split between “The Human” and “Everything Else.” These are plays that grapple with the immense power we seem to have over reality, setting it against the intuition that Nature (or whatever you prefer to call it) will ultimately envelop and supersede everything we create. Indeed, the elision between the gods and the environment in these plays (so much attention to our dependence on the land and the weather, so much dread at the idea of “pollution”) is positively ecocritical. The trilogy is almost posthumanist in its thorough and methodical deconstruction of rationality and individual accomplishment. And I cannot stress enough the narrative impact of beginning with Antigone and ending with Oedipus at Colonus—how the dramatic irony that looms over the second and third plays changes the stakes from “perhaps by making the right choices he can find redemption” to “how much punishment will he endure before he dies.”
I must say that while the questions of free will and narrative agency have always been nucleotides in the DNA of tragedy, I couldn’t help thinking about these ancient questions through the lens of recent(ish) neurologically-inflected complications of human agency; how so much of our lived experience is shaped by neurobiological particulars which are beyond our control. Am I one of the 1% of people who will develop schizophrenia? I hope not. This is not too different from Oedipus’s plea in Colonus to be spared punishment for his actions which were apparently predicted before he was born. “Before I was even conceived!” he says. It reminds me also of Peter Lorre’s (for me) universe-altering speech from the end of Fritz Lang’s M. The one which totally turns “justice” on its head and opens up a deep lamentation for our inability to un-break the world, despite everything else that we seem to be capable of.
Anyway, these plays are astonishing. I hope I get to see them in performance one day, preferably all three.
Maybe it’s the fact that I just read Paul’s other book, or maybe it’s his very lucid translation for Hackett—probably both, honestly—but I have to say that I felt the intensity and human drama and thematic urgency of these plays more than ever before. The concept of hubris, which until now has seemed prescriptive and Aristotelian, has finally registered for me as the ur-anxiety arising from our species’s primordial split between “The Human” and “Everything Else.” These are plays that grapple with the immense power we seem to have over reality, setting it against the intuition that Nature (or whatever you prefer to call it) will ultimately envelop and supersede everything we create. Indeed, the elision between the gods and the environment in these plays (so much attention to our dependence on the land and the weather, so much dread at the idea of “pollution”) is positively ecocritical. The trilogy is almost posthumanist in its thorough and methodical deconstruction of rationality and individual accomplishment. And I cannot stress enough the narrative impact of beginning with Antigone and ending with Oedipus at Colonus—how the dramatic irony that looms over the second and third plays changes the stakes from “perhaps by making the right choices he can find redemption” to “how much punishment will he endure before he dies.”
I must say that while the questions of free will and narrative agency have always been nucleotides in the DNA of tragedy, I couldn’t help thinking about these ancient questions through the lens of recent(ish) neurologically-inflected complications of human agency; how so much of our lived experience is shaped by neurobiological particulars which are beyond our control. Am I one of the 1% of people who will develop schizophrenia? I hope not. This is not too different from Oedipus’s plea in Colonus to be spared punishment for his actions which were apparently predicted before he was born. “Before I was even conceived!” he says. It reminds me also of Peter Lorre’s (for me) universe-altering speech from the end of Fritz Lang’s M. The one which totally turns “justice” on its head and opens up a deep lamentation for our inability to un-break the world, despite everything else that we seem to be capable of.
Anyway, these plays are astonishing. I hope I get to see them in performance one day, preferably all three.
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