Oresteia -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 13:59:10 02/07/08 Thu
Author: Shannon
Subject: Oresteia

In Violence and the Sacred, Girard outlines the relations between sacrifice rituals and judical systems. In class on Wednesday, we discussed the steps in which communities transition from scapegoating to payment to judicial systems as ways of ending vengence and rivalry violence. The Oresteia, by Greek tragedian Aeschylus, though it skips the "payment" step, illustrates the transition from revenge to legal justice. The trilogy outlines the quest for vengence of Orestes and Electra for their father's (Agememnon) murder by his wife and her lover. Orestes is commanded to revenge by the god Apollo, but once he has killed his mother in retaliation, he is hunted by the Furies for matricide. There seems to be no end to the cycle of violence, for how can Orestes be either justly accused (since Apollo commanded him) or justly aquited? In the end, Athena commands him to seek the judicial system in Athens. Symbolic of the transition from vengence to law, the Furies are transformed in to the Eumenides (the Kindly Ones)-spirits of justice of a new sort, in which mercy overcomes revenge.

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