Meditation 4
Meditation 4:
I found it weird that all of the plays were similar but had minor differences, which makes sense because the story was told orally. When I think about why the stories became so different I think about the game telephone that I played when I was in middle school. The story is passed between people, and after a number of people hear the story it starts to change or become misunderstood. I am a little confused on why some of the plays have different characters though? Where the names just changed or are the characters totally different. The plays are supposed to be the same, so the difference in characters and style of writing confused me. The one thing that is consistent in all of the plays is that Electra helps Orestes avenge the death of their father. I do not have much prior knowledge of the Greek plays so I found it hard to understand the stories, but I think I got the main idea.
posted by markfoster5 @ 11:24 AM
5 Comments:
I am curious what gave you the impression that these plays were supposed to be the same. I think because we look at these plays in a historical light we forget that the playwrights are after all artists. I think the differences were not merely oral failure (thought that is a good guess) but very conscious choices made by these individual writers. They were trying to win a competition. New readings of old tales probably would have been a good way to win the prize.
I would agree with averie that I think the playwrights changed the story to fit their own needs. Perhaps each playwright chose to show the story in a different light or from a different character's vantagepoint. Either way, I do like your analogy of the telephone game. I choose to think that each author is playing the telephone game but changing the words to win a prize (the play festival).
I remember the telephone game and that seems to make lots of since as to what could have happened. But at the same time i think that since there are different authors, they wanted their plays to be different in a way so they could stand out. There are consistancies throuhgout all the plays and you pointed out the major one i would say.
I like that comparison. Maybe they did want there plays to be different becasue they were in a competiton, but thats the same as the phone game. Some people purposely make somethin up to make the game interesting. Just like these authors changed there stories to make them intersting.
I don't think that the plays were written to be the same. Different playwrights put different spins on things
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