Background
 

• Hero cults: cf. the Oedipus at Colonus: butchery of Agamemnon's corpse, long dirge (kommos) by Orestes and Electra is a funereal song (312-465) sung over the grave, and influenced by the hero's power
• Note the lack of unity of place ( a bit surreal)

The Token scene: why so emphatic?

lock of hair: placed on Agamemnon's grave (the hero's grave): a normal part of the ceremony of sacrifice, indeed the act in the sacrifice before the blood letting

the footsteps: which lead Electra to Orestes, but which also symbolize the way in which one generation of this cursed family follows in the footsteps of the next?

the embroidered cloth: embroidered with wild beasts: wildness tamed: note the hunting images, the capture in the net of the lion, etc.

emblemmatic of the estrangement of the family, and Orestes' exile

the formalness, the ritual-like nature of the "ceremony" of identification: note, over the hero's grave

this leads, in the long kommos, to the gradual unity of Orestes and Electra, in song and mind:

Electra, when we first see her, is very cautious: 85ff., esp. 123-4

Electra, by the song's end, is murderous:  388-390!

but the ceremony is also very strange: the tokens are not at all realistic, indeed the whole seems very surreal: surely Aeschylus was no fool, and did not think these sensible tokens in the "real" world: this is part of what lends the scene its spiritual overtones

The Great Tableau: revisited

Orestes standing with weapon over the two dead bodies at the door of the palace: repeats image from Agamemnon

Effect?

Closure: the symmetry is clear to audience, in image as in mind, and clearly the age-old law of retaliation has been fulfilled, and the family has now, at last, reached the point where there are, seemingly, no human avengers left: the third generation of revenge

Openness, questions: the action is repeated: what will keep it, really, from repeating itself again? Is there really a final resolution in the third generation of blood-lettings (and compare Zeus!)

More openness, for as in Agamemnon, the motives are not so simple: see lines 306ff for no less than four causes admitted by Orestes himself (306ff)

1. Apollo's oracle commands it
2. Sorrow for the father demands it
3. But also Orestes' poverty-- rather than heir to the throne, he is an exile
4. And also outrage that "a brace of women" rule Mycene:
• (a) Clytemnestra,
• (b) "womanhearted" Aegisthus

Yet more openness, indeed open conflict by the play's end, for despite Apollo's command the avenging gods from the earth, the Furies, are assaulting our hero! (And to this compare the Odyssey, where Orestes' revenge is not at all problematic!)

Apollo

Apollo and images of light:

Orestes = light, 137

light of freedom may look on Orestes, 801

the light is breaking (during Clyt.'s murder): 950, 960

Justice is breaking: 315ff, 147ff, 935ff (compare images of light/darkness in Agamemnon)

Orestes kills by explicit order of the oracle (though there are other reasons, see above)

Pylades: speaks only once!

• his only words, 887: he intervenes at the climatic moment, almost as though the voice of Apollo himself
• but he is a constant visual reminder of Apollo's commitment to vengeance

Serpents and Butchers

• Butchers: Can the new murder then really "wipe clean the blood"? (630f)
• 628ff: already the Furies are brought into play!
• cf. 817ff: an "innocent murder"? can there be an "innocent murder"? of a parent? of anyone?
• Horrible image of the snake feeding on the mother's breast (below): reminds us of the earlier generations, where the children have been the object of a perverse feasting
• Aegisthus is announced as the butcher at 823, but the images the Chorus gets of the murders of Aegisthus and Clyt. (pp. 214ff, esp. lines 846f) are images of butchery not of heroic killing
• (Compare image of the butchery of Agamemnon's corpse, 428ff)
• (images of blood curse horridly vivid:
• blot clots in the earth, 66ff,
• dead take root beneath the soil, 282ff)
• (Orestes in killing drains his own blood, for his blood comes from the mother: as the nurse reminds us at 736)
• What's different though about the killing? Is there anything different?
• perhaps a hint in that there is no lust for revenge, no pleasure in the murder (compare Clytemnestra's revel in the "spring rain" of blood at Agamemnon's murder, Ag. 1410ff)
• can it be then that this retribution, not done in pleasure but at the direct command of Apollo, is somehow a justice transcending simple revenge?
• Serpents and images of the earth
• [simile at Agamemnon 54ff with Iliad 2.310: eagles/vultures wheel over the nest, the young eaten by a snake]
• 509ff: Clyt.'s dream, to which compare the clotting of blood in mother earth at 66ff.
• 914: Clyt. recognizes Orestes as the snake
• 987ff: Orestes insists that Clytemnestra is the snake
• will the real snake, the real butcher, please stand up!
• 1048ff: the Furies, with hair of snakes, the Furies that well up from mother earth when the blood of kin is spilled
• Snakes: associations
• hidden in the earth = female, emerging from a dark hole (like a womb)
• killing through treachery rather than strength
• clotting of blood (a natural result of venom)
• [vipers: some ancients thought the female killed the male, and the children killed the mother in vengeance]
  
  
  
• The image clusters finally serve to bring to the fore that the conflict is, finally, not a personal conflict (between Clyt. and Orestes), but a cosmic conflict
• Orestes was obeying the command of the god Apollo, who threatened him with terrible punishment if he disobeyed (1028ff); at the end he goes to seek refuge with Apollo
• but rising from the blood-clotted earth at the end are the snake-haired Furies, who will fulfill the curse of Clyt. against her child, and who now pursue Orestes even as he seeks the aid of Apollo...

Clytaemnestra

Aegisthus

Orestes

Pylades

Electra