March 11 Class Notes

Over Spring Break use blogs as opportunity to research various texts


Movie: last hours of the war

• does not do justice to the greek play
• trojan woman hate Helen: they believe she is the reason for the deaths and the war
• Trjoan women are to be sold as slaves and concubines

Fall of troy:

• Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite want to know which of them is the most beautiful, they ask Paris of Troy as an objective party, and they all bribe him, however Aphrodite's bribe is most compelling, she offers the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen, however the problem was she was married to Menelaus the King of Sparta. Paris takes her, or convinces her to leave depending on the interpretation. The Greeks pursue her and so the Trojan war begins...

Back to the Movie/ Book

• Hecuba wants Menelaus to kill Helen...before he sees her, fore she knows if he lays eyes on her he will be swayed by her beauty.
• Helen on the other hand must convince Menelaus not to kill her, she asks what her fate is
• Hecuba says she must not die without being heard.
• Helen asks who really began the evils, she says Hecuba when she gave birth, and Priam when he did not stop his son's actions,
• Helen says she really had no part in it because she was seduced by Paris and Aphrodite.
• She believes that it is her doing, and because of her capture that the Greeks have no enemies, if they had not treated her as an object then they would not be in this position in the first place
• Says when Paris died, she should have left, and claims she tried

Hecuba:

• Paris was beautiful, and Helen was seduced by his beauty and his money, she enjoyed having the eastern men watch her and she liked having all the beautiful clothes
• believes that Helen would have gone with the winner no matter who it was
• wants the men to spit on Helen
• Tells Helen that she should have come to her husband with shame begging for forgiveness
• Reminds her of all the families that were lost
• wantes Menelaus to be worthy of his crown
• Menelaus stops her from killing herself
• says he will giver her to the Greeks to kill
• AT THIS TIME GREEKS COULD NOT WRITE ABOUT THE PRESENT BUT COULD ABOUT PAST AS WELL AS MYTHOLOGY

A MOTHER'S SACRIFICE;

• The Trojan women are the only ones left at the end of the war
• Casandrea went crazy possessed by Apollo, but no one believes her.
• she knows that Greeks are going to get it
• Athena withdraws her protection with them
• Helen's sister was Cytomnestra they married the two powerful greek men, Menelaus and Agamemnon respectively.
• Hecuba had two daughters: Ployzena is dead, killed as a sacrifice to Achilles, Cassandra is Agamemnon's concubine, her daughter in law Adremicha was married to Hector
• Hector is dead, and they had a son who is about six years old
• she is given two choices, because no man will take the heir of Troy he must be killed, so she either fights and they take her son and they don't bury him or she gives them her son and they still kill him and they give him a proper burial.

Tragedy: the worst thing is to live, especially after the death of loved ones
Aristotle said Euripedies understood the heart of comedy, and the worst possible outcome is to live after everyone lives

Trojan Women Actors and information