Cassandra's importance in Oresteia
Aeschlyus's trilogy, The Oresteia, is a tragic manifesto that painfully paints a bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. In the first respective play of the trilogy, "Agamemnon," the character of Cassandra plays a vital role to the play and the trilogy as a whole, in numerous distinct ways. Cassandra, as seer and prophetess, connects the present with the past, and more importantly, draws a foreshadowing veil of doom for the future. In her short yet powerful scene after meeting Clytaemnestra, the mischievous wife of Agamemnon, Cassandra gives a voice, a past, and a portrait to each of the three plays in the trilogy. Moreover, she is able to accomplish this remarkable feat in a divinely poignant manner. Cassandra possesses a woeful vulnerability as victim to both Apollo, her architect of prophecy, and Clytaemnestra, her murderer. "Agamemnon," the first play of The Oresteia follows the ill fate of the victorious King of Argos, Agamemnon. Upon arriving home from war, royal mistress, Cassandra, at his side, Agamemnon is brutally murdered by his own wife, Clytaemnestra and accomplice, Aegisthus. Clytaemnestra distraught and enraged over Agamemnon's affair with Helen of Troy, coupled with his
Driven off his native land, he will come home Beggar! Wretch! Starve for bread in hell In these short two passages, Cassandra powerfully enlightens the people to two momentous truths. In the first, she predicts the loathsome deaths of the royal family of Argos. The resonant word, "kinsmen," meaning relative, appears consecutively interspersed with the ghastly images of "severed heads," "soil streaming blood," and "slaughterhouse of heroes" (1089-1090). even in these, his glories, mortified by friends Ai, the torture! She is mixing her drugs, Reach to taste and For so much suffering, There will come another to avenge us, ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Approximate Word count = 1742
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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