Dimensions
135 x 203 x 9mm
In its most elemental plot line, ELEKTRA follows a three-man team of killers carrying out murders to avenge an earlier murder in a long succession of intra-familial violence. The leader of the team is Orestes. His mother, Klytemnestra, and her lover, Aegithus, assassinated his father when he was ten years old. Now Orestes, having been safe in exile for many years, has come home to kill them.
Both mother and son want the other dead. But to act on that overwhelming need both characters must suppress their keenest familial emotions, Orestes for the woman who bore him and Klytemnestra for the child she fed at her breast.
Sophocles calls into question the efficacy and morality of revenge itself. In his characterizations, the revengers are almost as distasteful as the murderers they righteously kill. Instead of exalting a successful fulfillment of justice the play reveals the dehumanizing effect revenge has on its perpetrators.
Bagg's goal has been to make an accurate but idiomatic renderings of the Greek original that is suited for reading, teaching, or performing.
