Dying Inside

“I don’t come any more,” she says abruptly. “You know, I used to come, practically every time. The original Hot Pants Kid, me. But around five years ago something happened, around the time my marriage was first breaking up. A short circuit down below. I started coming every fifth time, every tenth time. Feeling the ability to respond slip away, from me. Lying there waiting for it to happen, and of course that doused it every time. Finally I couldn’t come at all. I still can’t. Not in three years. I’ve laid maybe a hundred men since the divorce, give or take five or ten, and not one brought me off, and some of them were studs, real bulls. It’s one of the things Karl’s going to work on with me. So I know what it’s like, Duv. What you must be going through. To lose your best way of making contact with others. To lose contact gradually with yourself. To become a stranger in your own head.” She smiles. “Did you know that about me? About the troubles I’ve been having in bed?”

I hesitate briefly. The icy glare in her eyes gives her away. The aggressiveness. The resentment she feels. Even when she tries to be loving she can’t help hating. How fragile our relationship is! We’re locked in a kind of marriage, Judith and I, an old burned-out marriage held together with skewers. What the hell, though. “Yes,” I tell her. “I knew about it.”

“I thought so. You’ve never stopped probing me.” Her smile is all hateful glee now. She’s glad I’m losing it. She’s relieved. “I’m always wide open to you, Duv.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be much longer.” Oh, you sadistic bitch! Oh, you beautiful ball-buster! And you’re all I’ve got. “How about some more spaghetti, Jude?” Sister. Sister. Sister.

FOURTEEN.

Yahya Lumumba

Humanities 2A, Dr. Katz

November 10. 1976

The “Electra” Theme in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

The use of the “Electra” motif by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides is a study in varying dramatic methods and modes of attack. The plot is basically the same in Aeschylus’ Choephori and the Electras of Sophocles and Euripides: Orestes, exiled son of murdered Agamemnon, returns to his native Mycenae, where he discovers his sister Electra. She persuades him to avenge Agamemnon’s murder by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, who had slain Agamemnon on his return from Troy. The treatment of the plot varies greatly at the hands of each dramatist.

Aeschylus, unlike his later rivals, held as prime consideration the ethical and religious aspects of Orestes’ crime. Characterization and motivation in The Choephori are simple to the point of inviting ridicule — as, indeed, can we see when the more worldly-minded Euripides ridicules Aeschylus in the recognition scene of his Electra. In Aeschylus’ play Orestes appears accompanied by his friend Pylades and places an offering on Agamemnon’s tomb: a lock of his hair. They withdraw, and lamenting Electra comes to the tomb. Noticing the lock of hair, she recognizes it as being “like unto those my father’s children wear,” and decides Orestes has sent it to the tomb as a token of mourning. Orestes then reappears, and identifies himself to Electra. It is this implausible means of identification which was parodied by Euripides.

Orestes reveals that Apollo’s oracle had commanded him to avenge Agamemnon’s murder. In a long poetic passage, Electra steels Orestes’ courage, and he goes forth to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He obtains entrance to the palace by deception, pretending to his mother Clytemnestra that he is a messenger from far-off Phocis, bearing news of Orestes’ death. Once inside, he slays Aegisthus, and then, confronting his mother, he accuses her of the murder and kills her.

The play ends with Orestes, maddened by his crime, seeing the Furies coming to pursue him. He takes refuge in the temple of Apollo. The mystic and allegorical sequel, The Eumenides, sees Orestes absolved of blame.

Aeschylus, in short, was not overly concerned with the credibility of his play’s action. His purpose in the Oresteia trilogy was a theological one: to examine the actions of the gods in placing a curse upon a house, a curse stemming from murder and leading to further murder. The keynote of his philosophy is perhaps the line, “’Tis Zeus alone who shows the perfect way of knowledge. He hath ruled, men shall learn wisdom, by affliction schooled.” Aeschylus sacrifices dramatic technique, or at least holds it in secondary importance, in order to focus attention on the religious and psychological aspects of the matricide.