dan1066's review
5.0
Be not fear struck when your turn comes in the action
but with a great cry Father
when she cries Child to you
go on through with the innocent murder.
Agamemnon’s death in the first part of the trilogy sets the stage for Orestes’s revenge in The Libation Bearers. The chorus of slave women and his sister Electra affirm Orestes’s mission: He is to revenge his father’s death by executing his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus. Furthermore, Orestes believes he is on a mission from God, specifically Apollo; he doesn’t have much choice. When he exits the house having completed his bloody mission, he brings out the blood-stained net used in the slaying of his father—a net symbolizing his own predicament, straitened by the forces of destiny to perform a terrible act.
The final scene is intense. While the chorus celebrates the end of their tyranny, Orestes seems to lose his mind, seeing Furies no one else can intent on punishing him for his actions:
These are no fancies of affliction. They are clear,
and real, and here; the bloodhounds of my mother’s hate.
And he exits in a hurry because he can no longer stay. The chorus wonders about the outcome:
Where
is the end? Where shall the fury of fate
be stilled to sleep, be done with?
Well, folks, the conclusion will be found in the final (existent) installment, Eumenides…
but with a great cry Father
when she cries Child to you
go on through with the innocent murder.
Agamemnon’s death in the first part of the trilogy sets the stage for Orestes’s revenge in The Libation Bearers. The chorus of slave women and his sister Electra affirm Orestes’s mission: He is to revenge his father’s death by executing his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus. Furthermore, Orestes believes he is on a mission from God, specifically Apollo; he doesn’t have much choice. When he exits the house having completed his bloody mission, he brings out the blood-stained net used in the slaying of his father—a net symbolizing his own predicament, straitened by the forces of destiny to perform a terrible act.
The final scene is intense. While the chorus celebrates the end of their tyranny, Orestes seems to lose his mind, seeing Furies no one else can intent on punishing him for his actions:
These are no fancies of affliction. They are clear,
and real, and here; the bloodhounds of my mother’s hate.
And he exits in a hurry because he can no longer stay. The chorus wonders about the outcome:
Where
is the end? Where shall the fury of fate
be stilled to sleep, be done with?
Well, folks, the conclusion will be found in the final (existent) installment, Eumenides…
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