Sophocless Electra vs. Euripidess Electra :: comparison compare contrast essays

Euripides and Sophocles wrote their own versions of the Electra story. The basic plot is as follows: Agamemnon is killed by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus after he returns from the Trojan war to reclaim his sister-in-law Helen from the Trojans.   Electra and her brother Orestes plot to kill their mother and her lover to revenge his death.   Both authors wrote about the same plot, but the built the story very differently.   Sophocles focused on Orestes, and Euripides focused more on the life of Electra.   In Sophocles's version, the play opens with Orestes learning his fate from the Pythian Oracle; he must revenge his father's death unarmed and alone.   He sends his pedagogue Pylades, as a spy, to learn about the situation in Mycenae.   Electra mourns for her father's death.   She is unable to avenge her father's murders without the help of Orestes, her brother.   She is also mad about how her mother and her lover waste her father's riches and desecrate his name.   Her half-sister Chrysothemis is no help to Electra and refuses to help in the murder of her mother and mother's lover. Pylades arrives bearing the sad news of Orestes death. He tells Clytemnestra that Orestes was killed in a chariot race at the Delphian games; his body was cremated and his ashes were sent to Mycenae.   Concealing his identity, Orestes arrives and with the help of Electra and Pylades, plots the murder of his mother and his mother's lover.   Orestes enter the palace, kills his mother and returns to Electra.   When Aegisthus arrives, Orestes kills him as well fulfilling his destiny.   Euripides's version is much more dramatic.   The play begins with Electra's marriage to a peasant.   Aegisthus had tried to kill Electra but Clytemnestra convinced him to allow her to live.   He decided to marry her to a peasant so her children will be humbly born and pose no threat to his throne.   Orestes and Pylades arrive.   Orestes says that he has come to Apollo's shrine to pledge himself to avenge his father's murder.   Orestes, concealing his identity, talks with Electra about the recent happenings in Mycenae.   She admits that she is sad that her brother had been taken away at such a young age and the only person that would recognize him would be her father's old servant.   She also discusses her scorn of Aegisthus desecrating the monument over Agamemnon's grave and his ridicule of Orestes.