Summary
The setting is a mountain terrace with a cavern blocked by a boulder. Steps lead up to a temple and a crowd is gathered.
A woman straightens a child’s kerchief and tells him he most definitely ought to be afraid. Men discuss the weather and how the dead seem to be getting nastier. Another man shushes them. A young woman complains that the palace folk are taking too long to show and an old woman tells the others that this young woman’s dead husband was fooled for ten years. The young woman admits this is true and that she feels his hatred when his ghost coils around her and tries to share her bed.
As the crowd murmurs their complaints about the tardiness of the royals, Zeus, Orestes, and the tutor approach. The tutor criticizes the people’s ugliness and superstitions. Zeus rebukes him and says that in the eyes of Zeus he is also just dung.
The people grow more frantic. One man falls to his knees and cries of how he stinks and how the flies teem around him. Many begin calling out Aegistheus’ name.
Finally Aegistheus, Clytemnestra, the high priest, and bodyguards arrive. Aegistheus tells his guards to fetch Electra. When the soldiers return, they say they cannot find her. Aegistheus sighs that they will deal with her tomorrow, and the high priest orders the soldiers to roll away the stone.
The high priest stands before the opening and summons the dead to pour forth and wreak their havoc on the living. He calls for the “specters, harpies, ghouls, and goblins of our night” (77). The priest dances and falls to the ground.
Aegistheus announces that they are coming forth. Orestes says quietly that he cannot abide this. Zeus tells him sternly to look him in the eyes and be quiet. Orestes stutters, and asks him who he is. Zeus replies he will know soon.
In the meantime, Aegistheus claims the dead are there now. Where once they were debtors, they are now creditors. There are children, lovers, fathers, etc. The crowd calls for mercy and Aegistheus rebukes them. He cries that the dead have no mercy and “their grievances are time-proof, adamant; rancor without end” (78). He instructs the dead to play their parts.
The women cry out that they need mercy, that they weep for the dead from dawn until dust but still their memories of them slip away. The men ask for forgiveness that they are living while the dead are gone. Children ask to be forgiven for being born; they say they are afraid, puny, and weak.
Aegistheus calls for quiet because the man whom he slew, Agamemnon, is coming forth. Orestes privately draws his sword and Zeus clutches his arm.
Aegistheus suddenly espies Electra, who is clad in all white. He asks why she is wearing white, not black, and she claims she wore her prettiest dress and is not in mourning. Aegistheus angrily tells her she is the last survivor of an accursed race and that he will punish her. The crowd voices its hatred of her as well.
Electra boldly says her father would be happy to see her happy. The crowd wonders if she is telling the truth, and others say she is full of nonsense. Electra tells them that there are places where people are at peace, happy, and content. There the sun shines, but here everyone is too afraid of ghosts. As for her, she says, she is simply dancing.
The high priest orders the crowd to ignore her, but she continues to dance for “happiness and life” (81). Women begin to murmur that the dead are not punishing her. Someone says Aegistheus lied.
Zeus becomes angry and stretches his arm, speaks a few words, and the big stone begins to move and crash into the temple. The crowd is stunned and turns their fury and fear on Electra. Aegistheus rebukes them and tells them to get back into their places. He orders them to disperse and ready for the dead. As for Electra, he casts her out and says she will be killed if she is in the city after the sun goes down. He and his guards depart and the crowd follows.
Zeus criticizes her and Orestes warns him to desist because that is his sister. Zeus and the tutor leave. Orestes walks up to Electra and warns her that she is in danger. She says bitterly that she cannot leave, and that she resents his eyes for filling her with the sense that she could cure the people of Argos with words. She explains that she will go to Apollo’s shrine for refuge and no one will hurt her. He asks why he cannot help her and she admits she is waiting for her brother to come. She refuses to think he is dead; she pictures him as a big, strong, angry man and even though he frightens her in her dreams, she knows she can help direct his rage.
Orestes asks what would happen if her brother was not like that, then introduces himself as such. Electra cries out that he is a liar, but then relaxes and notes his shining eyes and noble forehead. She marvels at how young he looks and how he has not seen battle. He is not what she expected, but they truly are brother and sister.
Orestes wants her to come away with him, but she cannot leave her homeland and ignore its doom. As they chat, Zeus slinks back in and listens. Electra tells Orestes he is really more of a stranger and knows nothing of life in Argos. He grew up in a wonderful environment and is too noble of a soul to be the accomplice she needs. Orestes is upset that she is trying to drive him away and that he is not the man she expected.
Electra simply explains she could not lay such hate on Orestes’s heart, and he says that his heart may not have hate but it does not have love either. He rues that he is a man with no possessions, no loves, and no history. He is a stranger to everyone and no one waits for him anywhere. He wants his “share of memories, my native soil, my place among the men of Argos” (88). Electra is frustrated with his obstinacy and demands he go away.
Orestes continues to beg her to understand – he wants to belong to a place. He can use his sword to help the city. Electra brushes this off.
Orestes bemoans this callousness and begs Zeus to give him direction and a sign. Still hidden, Zeus laughs and makes light come out of the stone. Electra is amused and tells Orestes he has his sign and must go.
Orestes, dismayed, wonders if this is the right thing – is it the right thing to be at peace? His tone changes and he states emphatically that there is another way and that from this moment on he will take no one’s orders, be he a man or a god. Everything feels empty to him right now; everything is cold and dark. Electra is unnerved by his behavior.
Orestes grasps her and tells her that she is his sister and this is his city. She complains he is hurting her, but asks what he plans to do. All he says is he will say goodbye to his old life and its lightness and radiance. He is going to prepare to take the city and release its toxins. Electra is still uncomfortable but is happier since this seems like the brother of her dreams.
Continuing, Orestes claims he will take the crimes of all the people shaking in fear and earn the freedom of the city. He will not atone for their sins but will merely take them by killing the King and Queen.
Electra is filled with passion and fear; she knows this to truly be Orestes, and relishes what punishment is to come for her mother and the usurper King. She begs Orestes to hold and protect her.
Analysis
In the beginning of the second act, Orestes witnesses the rite that Aegistheus and Clytemnestra, with the aid of Zeus, designed to keep the people submissive. It preys on their guilt and their remorse, and precludes their rising up in any sort of collective action. The people remain depressed, downtrodden, and pliable; they do not know they are free to slough off these psychological bonds. They have come to need their despair and their perverse obsession with the dead, and even though they begin to wonder if Electra is on to something, they quickly return to their hostility of freedom when Zeus negates her power with a sign.
Electra certainly gives off the impression that she is ready to challenge her mother and Aegistheus’ rule. She wears white, dances and sings, and gleefully chides the people for their fears. She initially thinks that she “could cure the people here by words” but realizes, “Words are no use for such as they. An evil thing is conquered only by another evil thing, and only violence can save them” (85). She wants to return to her dreams and wait for her brother so she can “direct his rage” (85). When she finds out Philebus is actually Orestes, she is excited at first but comes to think that he is too noble to help her and she needs more of “an accomplice” (87). She states directly that she has “plans” (88) and once Orestes has his epiphany of his freedom (more on that momentarily), she revels in what is to come: “From now on, all the moments will link up, like the cogs in a machine, and we shall never rest until they are both lying on their backs, with faces like crushed mulberries” (92).
All of these words, however, eventually prove to be only that – words, with a nod to Shakespeare, that are full of sound and fury and signify nothing. Electra may seem like she is ready to embrace freedom, but she will fall short.
Orestes, unlike Electra, experiences a remarkable epiphany in which he realizes he is totally free, does not need the gods, will not feel remorse for committing seemingly immoral but actually just acts, and need only care about the present; he becomes the absolute exemplar of Sartre’s philosophy of Existentialism. It is important to look carefully at this transformation. First, Orestes tells Electra who he is but she tells him she does not need him and that he will always be a stranger to Argos. He begins to question why he came to the city, and beseeches Zeus to show him the god’s will. When Zeus sends a blaze of light, Orestes regards it and the implied message of peace and submission with curiosity. This, then, is the moment when things start to shift. Electra notices his eyes look strange and he speaks in a new tone. He tells her he will “take no one’s orders, neither man’s nor god’s” (90). He suddenly sees a profound and “endless emptiness” (90) that he will have to venture into to save Electra and the city. He also knows that the past does not matter anymore so he has to “say good-by to my youth” (91).
Perhaps most importantly, Orestes realizes that he will have to take the decisive action of killing the Queen and Aegistheus to earn the people’s freedom and to fully embody his own. The critic Pierre Horn explains, “in view of the fact that an existentialist situation must offer individuals the opportunity to make meaningful choices that will determine their acts, the problem of action is not merely the problem of what happens and why it happens, but the problem of commitment to a choice.”
Just because Orestes has embraced his freedom and made his choice does not mean he is happy, however. Existentialism suggests that, as scholar Timothy Williams writes, “such an individual is overwhelmed by the full implications of this radical freedom and experiences moral anguish and a sense of absurdity in recognizing that everything is ultimately arbitrary.” Similarly, Dolores Mann Burdick claims that for Sartre, character is “in that moment of anguish when it morally gives birth to itself, so to speak” because “a man both liberates and defines himself by his acts.” The self is in the action and in the moment of discovery, but it is not easy or comfortable.
