Agamemnon by Ted Hughes

Agamemnon is a selfish, greedy king of the play "Agamemnon" by Ted Hughes, whose pride leads him to sacrifice his daughter and ultimately bring about his downfall. When Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia, he is "...snatched up into the chariot of his own madness. And inside himself, secretly, with a roar like rage, to deafen himself, he murders his own daughter... (15)". He believed that he had to sacrifice Iphigenia for the good of the country; however, throughout the play, the elders complain of the uselessness of the Trojan War, which demonstrates the king's arrogance. He fears he will be thought of as a coward if he does not pursue Helen and is willing to sacrifice his own daughter in order to maintain his high status and pride. However, this looms to be the cause of his death, for Clytemnestra explains her actions as vengeance for the fact that "...he ripped out my [her] daughter's throat and shook the blood out of her. To gratify his whimpering love-sick brother and catch a runaway whore (71)." His decision of pride over the life of his daughter was the principal reason his jealous wife murders him; in fact, this decision sets in motion the entire sequence of not only The Oresteia but also the Trojan War. This arrogance also leads the king to walk unsuspectingly into his death. His greedy characteristics cause Agamemnon to be the antagonist of the play and justify his own death.

Although she is convinced of the righteousness of her action of killing Agamemnon, Clytemnestra serves as a power hungry protagonist of the play "Agamemnon" by Ted Hughes. After she murders Agamemnon, she justifies this action by her "...daughter's protector, Justice, here perfected...by Iphigenia, by the Fury that must avenge her--that holy Fury for whom I [she] poured this blood (72)." She believed she was simply carrying out divine will by enacting revenge upon her daughter's murderer and is convinced that she is doing nothing wrong by murdering her husband, the king, Agamemnon. However, one might credit this outrage and fury to the fact that Agamemnon was willing to sacrifice his own daughter in order to retrieve Clytemnestra's sister, Helen, and thus exhibits a jealous part of Clytemnestra's character. The protagonist also exhibits a power-hungry streak when, after Agamemnon has been killed, she tells Aegisthus, "we are the law. The lives of all the people in Argos dangle on our word. Whatever word we speak, that is the law. At last the throne of Argos is ours (85)." This contradicts earlier notions that "justice" prompted her to murder her husband; this instead implies that she merely wanted the throne of Agamemnon and was willing to use the death of her daughter as an excuse. Having power over Argos for the past ten years, Clytemnestra is likely to not be willing to give up her power to her detested husband and sees that the only