Theatrical Adaptation

Differences

How can three stories that revolve around the same story, and have the same type of characters, portray a situation differently? Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides did in their interpretations of the return or Orestes. All three stories tell of the same brother and sister who are trying to avenge their father’s murder, but they each have their own spin on how Electra comes to find out about her brother’s return.
In Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, Electra, with help from the chorus, visits Orestes’ grave, and once there spots a lock of hair on the grave. She believes that this hair is much like her own, giving her reason to believe that her brother might have come back in secret to avenge the murder of his father. A few moments later, Electra notices some footprints that she states are: “Marks upon the ground/ Like those my feet have made, the very same…” (Lines 216-217). She claims that the footprints are the same size as hers, and look just like per own footprints, but she notices that there’s two sets of footprints, one for her brother and one for the person with him. But when her brother appears, she doesn’t believe it is him when he tells her who he is. He finally convinces her when he pulls out the piece of clothing that she made for him before he was sent away. This is an interesting way of proving that she thinks it’s her brother, because it would be hard for someone to know anything about a person from hair, and footprints.
On the other hand, in Sophocles’ Electra, Electra is holding the ashes of who she believes is her brother, when Orestes’ comes to her and talks to her about her misfortunes, and about her sorrows. He tells her that she shouldn’t have any sorrow because there’s no need to mourn the living. It isn’t until she sees the ring of their father on his hand that she believes it is really Orestes and he is really alive. This version, I thought, was more entertaining because of the confrontation between Orestes and Electra in which she believes he is mocking her for grieving her brother’s death until she realizes that he really isn’t dead, and he is standing directly in front of her.
In the last rendition we read, Electra written by Euripides, the realization that it is truly Electra’s brother who is talking to her is brought out in a more humorous way. First, Electra is married to an old man, and Orestes and his friend are guests in her house, though she doesn’t know the whole time they had been there. When she is shown the piece of hair, she shoots it down because she knows not all siblings have the same hair. When she is shown the footprints, she again shoots it down because it is a rocky ground and there is no way footprints would show up on rocky ground. The proof she needed was a tiny scar he has on his brow from falling when they were children. This small piece of proof was what changed her mind; a tiny scar made her realize that the man who was a guest in her house was really her brother for whom she has believed was dead for all those years.
Though all the stories are different adaptations of the same story, they all have the same ending, with her seeing that her brother is really alive, and he has been for all these years. And they all have the same moral: Don’t trust what you see; instead, go deeper to see all the clues needed to know the true version of what you’re looking at.

posted by LilmissKS @ 2:32 PM