In the Greek tragedy Agamemnon by Aeschylus, many readers of the play may believe Agamemnon to be the character who endures pain and retribution. And it is reasonable to believe Agamemnon is the victim of pain and retribution because he goes through ten years of war and sacrifices his own daughter. However, readers forget about what Clytemnestra and Cassandra experience. Clytemnestra endures the pain of her daughter’s death done by her husband. Cassandra endures the utter helplessness of her foreseen death executed by Clytemnestra. If readers can recognize Clytemnestra’s and Cassandra’s endurance then it will be easier to identify how Aeschylus expresses the themes of suffering, truth, and justice. This essay will show how Cassandra and Clytemnestra …show more content…
The discussion of Clytemnestra brings up another prominent theme of the play. The theme of the tensions between men and women. Aeschylus shows how bitterly Clytemnestra feels the death of her daughter, how much she resents those who will not believe her because she is a woman, and how strong a character she is. On the other hand, one aspect of this theme is perhaps hard for a reader to relate to, and that is the sense that it is not simply wrong but against nature and immoral for the female to kill the male, for a wife to kill her husband. But whatever a reader might feel, it does seem clear that Aeschylus is at least suggesting that men should look carefully at the way they treat women, that if wives become Clytemnestras, it may be because their husbands have been Agamemnons. In the play it is interesting to note what Clytemnestra says after killing Cassandra and Agamemnon. We see that, “Words, endless words I’ve said to serve the moment - now it makes me proud to tell the truth. How else to prepare a death for deadly men who seem to love you? How to rig the nets of pain so high no man can overleap them? I brooded on this trial, this ancient blood feud year by year. At last my hour came. Here I stand and here