Good Essay About Past In Current Decisions – Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon”

Actions are not left without outcomes in Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon”, and as it happens in the Greek tragedies, the outcomes are always melodramatic. Agamemnon’s tragic end is a reflection of the past events and actions that generated a set of consequences, which shape both a virtuous and a vicious personality.
Thesis Statement: For Agamemnon, the past is a sum of actions that occurred at the character’s will, through which he generated his own misfortune, as a punishment for his wrongdoings.
Clytemnestra explains in her plead that she murdered Agamemnon as a result of his father’s wrongdoing of feeding Thyestes his own children, after killing them: “In return for Atreus’ brutal feast/he kills his perfect son – for very murdered child, a crowning sacrifice”. Taking one person’s life for another is a common theme in the Ancient Greek literature, justified by the fact that the fathers’ mistakes are erred by their children. The “return” that Clytemnestra mentions is an indication of the past judgements and mistakes that generated the current tragedy, Agamemnon’s own hamartia.
Sherman indicates that in his act of sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia, Agamemnon acknowledges the circumstances of his action and “the magnitude of the disaster” that is about to happen. His father’s past of killing children is embedded in his choice of killing his daughter. As a result, by choosing to sacrifice his own daughter, Agamemnon brings upon himself his tragic end, which contradicts the chorus who is blaming Zeus: “Oh all through the will of Zeus/ the cause of all, the one who works it all”.
In choosing to kill her husband, Clytemnestra not only vengeances her sacrificed daughter, but she also enables the hamartia as the tragic consequence that Agamemnon activated when he decided to sacrifice Iphigenia for obtaining favourable wind to reach Troy.
Vasillopulos observes that Agamemnon has no consideration for his family, as his main concern is the political aspect. Because the wellbeing of Greece represents his main interest, Agamemnon is admired by his people and feared by his opponents. He embodies a mix of virtue and hamartia, being able to generate the public opinion’s pity when he is murdered.
Beyond the will of Zeus rests the will of man, embedded in his past. For Agamemnon the past is a reflection of his actions, but it is also inherited in his genes. His tragic hamartia encompasses past errors, which generates Clytemnestra’s choice of murdering him for killing his daughter, however, without erasing Agamemnon’s virtuosity.

Bibliography

Aeschylus. Agamemnon. (online: Start Publishing LLC, 2012).
Garaher, Brian G. “Tragedy, Euripides, Melodrama: Hamartia, Medea, Liminality” Amaltea. Revista de Mitocritica.Vol. 5, edition 2013, pp. 143-171.
Manfred Schmeling. From Ritual to Romance and Beyond. Comparative Literature and Comparative Religious Studies. (Berlin: Verlag, 2011), p. 125.
Sherman, Nancy in Rorty, Amelie. “Hamartia and Virtue” Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Vasillopulos, Christopher “Tragedy and the Revision of the Feminine” International Journal of Social InquiryInternational Journal of Social Inquiry. 2009. Vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 73-96.