Genre
Political drama / Greek tragedy
Language
Originally written in French
Setting and Context
Ancient Greek kingdom of Argos immediately after the unfriendly invasion and murder of Agamemnon, the true King of the Argives
Narrator and Point of View
The play is in third-person, and, as is usually the case with dramas, limited.
Tone and Mood
Dramatic, threatening, combative, tragic, anguished, cerebral
Protagonist and Antagonist
Orestes is the protagonist; every other character in the play is an antagonist.
Major Conflict
Will Orestes accept his identity as an Argive and his responsibility to seek justice? Will he murder Aegistheus, the usurper of his father Agamemnon's throne, and assume the throne himself? Will he feel remorse for his action or consider it just?
Climax
Orestes murders Aegistheus and Clytemnestra in order to free Argos and the people.
Foreshadowing
-The entire play foreshadows the fact that Orestes is going to murder the King and Queen.
-Aegistheus warns Orestes to beware of the flies, which will eventually commit themselves to plaguing him when he takes on the city's sins.
Understatement
Orestes understates his own responsibility for the murders by blaming the King and Queen for his need to murder them.
Allusions
- Sartre's core philosophies of existentialism and liberalism - Orestes presents arguments for both as part of his argument for why he should murder the invaders
- The statue of Zeus Ahenobarbos at Palermo: a colossal statue of Zeus now at the Museo Archeologico Regionale di Palermo, found in 1825
- Telemachus and Odysseus, characters from Homer's "Odyssey"
- The legend of the Pied Piper and the rats in Orestes taking away the flies
Imagery
See Imagery section
Paradox
Orestes believes that the flies are a punishment for the original murder of Agamemnon, but does not feel that his murder of the King and Queen should be punished.
Parallelism
There is a parallel between the situation in Argos and the situation in France that Sartre is trying to inspire his fellow citizens to resist.
Personification
"The words I speak are too big for my mouth, they tear it; the load of destiny I bear is too heavy for my youth and has shattered it" (Orestes, 120).
Use of Dramatic Devices
- Monologue (spoken by Zeus)
- Onomotopoeia (buzz of the flies)
- Aside (often done by Zeus)
