Theme Of Vengeance In The Oresteia

When observing the series of events that transpire throughout the course of The Oresteia, the three plays, we do see something of a fixation on revenge, taking vengeance for being wronged in many different scenarios, many of them resulting in deaths. In many of these situations, vengeance serves as their form of justice, though whether they are one and the same is the question. The expression goes that "An eye for an eye makes the world go blind" but another saying says that "Justice is blind". Do these people truly feel that revenge is justice?

“Agamemnon” is the first of the trilogy and tells the tale of the return of King Agamemnon from the Trojan War. While one may initially believe that his wife, Clytemnestra, would be happy to see her husband return after a long and brutal time away, we learn this is far from the truth. In fact, she intended to do what the war itself failed to and that was to murder him. She wasn’t however simply doing it due to some disdain for him. She was doing it for revenge. Agamemnon had previously sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, so in an attempt at perhaps getting justice for her, a masquerade for vengeance for herself, had, along with her lover Aegisthus, collaborated on a plot to see Agamemnon dead. As we would see in the next play of this saga, the vengeful apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

In this play, we see the return Agamemnon's children, Electra and Orestes, and they seek revenge on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus for the murder of their father Agamemnon. We see that it SMS to be something of a vicious cycle for this family, a death in the family occurs, caused by another member of that family, so another member of the family kills that member of the family under the guise of justice so that they may enact their