a. Was there enough pity and fear to go around? Katharsis, anyone?
b. Who has got a tragic flaw? Is anyone heroic in this play? Is
there more of a contrast here between good guys and bad guys
than in Oedipus?
c. Do the characters have free will? Could there be alternative outcomes?
d. What about two other main characteristics of Greek tragedy:
tragic irony and a sense of impending doom?
e. Easy: Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus - in what ways are they different
from how we've seen them before?
f. Euripides' play ended with Iphigenia being rescued by the dea ex machina
Artemis. Why didn't the movie do that? Also, what do you think Euripides'
attitude is to the deities and to religion and its functionaries?
f. Is this play/movie too much of a tearjerker? Is it a bit slow at times? And, overall, was this an effective
way to bring Greek tragedy and its main qualities to the screen?
II. Back to Oedipus: in search of the “tragic flaw” (hamartia):
a) Anger? Was it road rage?
His defense in Oedipus at Colonus 991-4:
“Just answer me one thing:
If someone tried to kill you here and now,
You righteous gentleman, what would you do,
Inquire first if the stranger was your father?
Or would you first try to defend yourself?"
Temper, temper: the scenes with Tiresias and Creon (300ff.)
b. Take the Fifth, stop the investigation
c. Tragedy of "fate"? Predestination vs. foreknowledge
III. The meaning and the moral
1. human heroism (cf. 1076ff., 1329ff., 1370ff., 1450ff., 1523ff.)
2. intellectual hamartia; cf. contemporary Athens: "Man is the measure of all things"
(Protagoras, the sophist)