final exam assignment

LITR 4533 TRAGEDY  Final Exam Samples 2012 Essays & Excerpts for Part B: Special Topics

Brandy Dornelly

Keeping it in the Family

While discussing families in Greek tragedies, the Oedipal and Electra conflicts are more common than not, but are also disturbing on many different levels. These topics make good for a piece of literature but in today’s day and age it is highly frowned upon and could even result in harsh consequences. Although we were only discussing the conflicts in class, it was a very uncomfortable yet one of the most interesting class discussions we experienced.

Euripides’s Hippolytus is a perfect example of the oedipal complex. Although Phaedra is just Hippolytus’s stepmother, she is still family and it is seen as disturbing. Although they never acted on any romantic feelings the strong love was enough to destroy an entire family. Hippolytus being the son of Phaedra’s husband was not enough to stop or change her feeling towards Hippolytus.

In Agamemnon by Aeschylus there is a rare and unique relationship between Electra and her father Agamemnon. Electra shows such a loyal and compelling love for her father throughout the play. There are many family circumstances and issues that drove Electra’s love for her father to be so strong; a love so strong that she would persuade her brother to avenge Agamemnon’s death. From the beginning of the story we witness Clytemnestra as not being the best mother or wife she should be. Clytemnestra’s unfaithfulness and dishonesty to her husband and family is the main driving force that strengthens Electra’s love for her father. It seems as though Electra is providing her father, Agamemnon with the love that he is lacking from his own wife. Electra thinks she can and is protecting her father from her mother’s actions but at the same time she is not living her life. My personal opinion is Agamemnon gave Electra the attention she wants from her mother as well, which strengthens her desire to always make her father happy. I don’t necessarily think Electra wants her father in a other than a typical father-daughter way but it comes off differently based of other factors of the story.

In Eugene O’Neil’s Mourning Becomes Electra, we see the same exact situation. Lavinia’s powerful love for her father Ezra is brought on by her failed relationship with her mother Christine; as well as Christine’s unfaithfulness to her husband. Christine tries to one up Lavinia on everything except with the relationship with Ezra. This is because she is infatuated with Adam Brant, her secret lover that Lavinia finds out about. It is kind of creepy how Lavinia turns down a relationship with Peter, to make it very clear to her father that he is the “only man she‘ll ever love”.

Both Electra and Lavinia embrace their fathers for the love and attention they lack from their mothers. The girls also both portray the essential essence of the Electra conflict.

It was very interesting to hear the conversation we had in class when these topics came up. I don’t have any kids as do the women in the class, but they talked about their child’s love for them and the jealousy they have when their husbands try to kiss or hug them. This kind of makes you understand better the love Lavinia and Electra have for their fathers. You always hear the phrase “daddy’s little girl” but these two plays took it to a new meaning.