Since Clytaemestra is a woman in Greek society she has no power against the King even though he is her husband. After sending her son Orestes away to keep him safe, she comes to find that her daughter was killed by her husband for his own gain in the war. He put the war in front of his family. Clytaemestra seems to be protective as any other mother is with her children. She wasn't consulted at all about the decision for her daughters sacrifice. She couldn't do anything else but to take the law into her own hands. She shouldn't be expected to just sit back and stay silent just because she is a woman. She lost her daughter to murder. It wasn't an accident and it was done on purpose. Back in that time in a Greek society blood for blood is how their law was interpreted. That is exactly how Clytaemestra interpreted it.
The presence of injustice within a legal system does not permit one to take the law into their own hands. Today, we handle things completely different and we are living in a completely different society then the Greeks were in Argos. They handled their law the way that they seemed fit for their society. If we let anyone take the law into their own hands in our society it would be complete chaos for everyone. Back in Agamemnons time, their way of handling the law seemed to work for them according to their standards. They were more on a religion basis with law than we are today. This of course does not mean that the way they handled things was in any means the correct or best way to do it. Back in the Greek times it was all they knew.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
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I think that if the Greeks allowed anyone in their society to take the law into their own hands as we have seen, will lead to chaos. When one person murders someone in the play take it Agememnon his daughter or Clytaemestra her husband we see it leads to chaos. The gods told Orestes that he would still be at risk for being murdered by others because of the murder he committed by killing his mother. As we can see this leads to a large string of death and destruction. So it is hard to say that the Greeks allowed people to take justice into their own hands. The gods permitted it but knew it would create chaos so they cautioned all that attempted to commit murder that even if it was justified, they still faced death.
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