Theme Of Justice In Aeschylus's Oresteia

Every character in Aeschylus's Oresteia is concerned with the notion of justice. The trilogy repeatedly emphasizes a fundamental concept of justice: revenge. It is a really simple but powerfully emotional basis for justice, associating retribution with family, emotions and honor. The Oresteia explores whether the revenge ethic is adequate as a legitimate basis for justice. It depicts the flaws of the practice of personal vendetta: the cyclical nature of blood crimes and the lack of a clear distinction between right and wrong when one is personally involved and caught up in the details. Over the course of the plays, the understanding of justice shifts from personal vendetta to the administration of justice by trial, culminating in the final trial of Orestes in the Eumenides. It is the contention of this paper that the trial in the final play is foreshadowed by a …show more content…
It shows the reader that there are many concerns and motives in play, some of which have no immediate connection to justice but rather more to do with baser human instincts. The fact that Agamemnon and Clytemnestra go to excesses in their killing, well beyond what is required by the demands of justice, demonstrates that they are carrying out the destruction to satisfy much deeper and far less worthy human urges. The purpose of the first play is to compel the reader to realize that justice based on revenge creates many difficulties, which it cannot solve, as exhibited by the bloody history of the House of Atreus and its self-perpetuating cycle of violence. The end of the Agamemnon leaves us with the graphic image of a city divided against itself. The city seems to be caught in the metaphorical net that keeps cropping up in the trilogy, from which there is no escape. The problems posed by this inadequacy of the revenge ethic become the prime focal point of the following plays, which seek to find a way through the