The Oresteia by Aeschylus is a trilogy of plays about the house of Atreus. In each of the three plays there are two main characters, one obviously stated and the other stated subtly through the name of the play and the chorus. All three plays deal with vengeance and justice. The decisions taken by the characters are considered simple and effective but it seems more hypocritical due to oversimplification. “Oversimplification is reducing complexity so severely that a distorted impression is given.[1]” Oversimplifications occurs frequently in our day to-day lives mainly related to politics, traumatic incidents and science [2]. Some instances when oversimplifications were used in the past year: Global Warming, Israel-Palestine tensions, Income Inequality, Gun control, Abortion, and Police Brutality. These issues are multi-layered, complex and nuanced. Simple solutions would fail to solve them and results in ignoring the causes of the problems. Such actions would be hypocritical as the "simple solutions" end up causing more problems. Aeschylus showcases the theme of oversimplification in an interesting way. He ties the hypocrisy of the characters to the oversimplified notion that each character obtains. Each of the main characters believes that they were justified in their actions. Agamemnon believes that he was justified in the sacrifice of Iphigenia because the Greeks were victorious in the Trojan War, Clytemnestra believes she was justified in the murder of Agamemnon due to the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon, Orestes believes he was justified in the killing of his mother and Aegisthus because of the murder of his father and finally the furies are justified in punishing Orestes for the crime of committing matricide. Therefore, depending on the portion an unbiased bystander opts to concentrate on and the perspective in which they view the Oresteia, the person that is justified changes dramatically. This shows that everybody should look at the complex situation in its’ entirety and not oversimplify any role or action. None of the characters understands their opponents’ perspective and takes rash and brutal decisions. This causes every main character to be hypocritical because they pass judgement on others for crimes while committing similar yet worse crimes. Understanding this concept, I attempted to understand the events in the Oresteia by putting myself in different perspectives and concentrating on different portions. Below are the results.
Links: https://www.becomeanindividual.com/oversimplification/ https://www.thoughtco.com/oversimplification-and-exaggeration-fallacies-3968441 https://biznewske.com/oversimplification-fallacy-examples/
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |