, Research Paper

Everybody learns something in life, but non everybody learns something about life. This rule is easy demonstrated in the two characters of Andromache, from the drama? Trojan Women? , and Admetos, organize the? Alcestis? by Euripidies. While Andromache learns something about the significance of life and decease, Admetos does non ; or at least he does non understand anything about life and decease. Understanding is the cardinal portion of acquisition, without which one can non really larn.

The demand for understanding life is a urgent issue for the characters of Euripidies. Hecuba spends an full drama lamenting over her deficiency of understanding for life. She goes through many lines of the hurting she has been caused in life, but she struggles when it comes to why this has happened. Could it be the mistake of the Supreme beings who have something against her? Or possibly it was the because Hera was overcome by a hatred for beauty. None of these accounts are right by the concluding scenes, but it is of import to understand the idea procedure she went through, to make the first decisions, so that we can understand how Andromache came to her concluding decision: merely through wretchedness and discord do we larn to appreciate being alive ; and the terminal of that life is non ours to make up one’s mind, but the pick, instead, of the Gods.

Although Andromache has had a hubby and her people slain, she finally comes to the realisation that she must populate and travel on. What is life if we dwell merely in our wretchedness? Should trouble and enduring truly convey us to the point of decease as is the thought suggested by Hecuba: ? best now to decease in the ruins and fires of our Fathers? house? ( lines 1282 and 1283 ) . If the dead, as Andromache provinces, have no? perceptual experience of evil feel no heartache ; ? they can non understand the agony they went through because they don? t retrieve it. It can so be inferred that those who are dead have no felicity. In so stating, Andromache realizes that without life she would non hold had the felicity to free, nor would she hold given up that felicity.

Andromache must endure more in the drama, when her babe male child, Astyanax, is taken from her and killed. She has lost at this point all strength to maintain her boy from executing, but even if she had non, it? s questionable whether or non she would hold saved him. She states that: ? These are the Gods who damn us to death. ? To me this statement says that she lacks the strength to find who should decease and who should populate. It? s non the pick of mortal men/women to reprobate person to decease. It? s possible that she is stating that because we are so inclined to endeavor for felicity we are unable expression beyond the agony and therefore being caught up in our ain hurting we can non find who? s decease is warranted. We, as persons lack the ability to abstain from wallowing in our sorrow, and so we would hold no 1 dice in order to continue the enjoyment of life. But as stated before, without enduring life would be with out

joy, so person, ? the Gods, ? must take our deceases, in order to continue the will to populate ( for the persons ) . With this realisation Andromache is able to travel on and function another maestro, because she understand that without this wretchedness she would non hold had such a life in which she had the felicity.

Admetos is setup to larn the a similar such lesson of life in the? Alcestis. ? He is given the power over finding his decease if he can happen person who will decease for him. His married woman, Alcestis, voluntaries to take his topographic point. Life to him is something that can be that can be avoided no affair the cost. He is instantly willing to let his married woman to decease alternatively of him, because he does non understand how valuable life truly is, and until he suffers, he will non. He has had no enduring up to this point, holding inherited a immense land and even been granted a God for a slave. So why would he experience that he should decease, he has lived a life of privilege: why non go on in the same manner?

After her decease, he goes into plaint. It seems as if he begins understand the value of life, the really holiness of which he has violated. The wretchedness drives him to recognize that life is nil if you can? t have felicity, but he would non hold realized that without the hurting that the decease of Alcestis brought him. Admetos did non appreciate the felicity he enjoyed in life until confronted with the decease of a loved one, person who needed non die at all. Alcestis, in her decease, understands that life is what affairs because, as she states, ? the dead are nothing. ? What is life without decease? What drives a individual to populate if they ne’er need fear decease?

Admetos would allow his life basically stop when his married woman dies, or so he promises to. His purposes do non command his actions, alternatively he entertains invitees. He besides breaks the promise to non hold another adult female enter the house, in making so he mocks the holiness of the life lost, and the felicity that went with it. Through his wretchedness he? learns? life is to be appreciated, but he does non understand this instruction due to his ain ignorance. His realisation is non reinforced due to his married woman? s return, so the new found wisdom of life is lost and alterations nil.

The thought that one must endure in order to be happy is a difficult pill to get down. The audience at the clip might non hold understood the magnitude of what Euripidies was seeking to state: dwell non in hurting and loss, but instead suffer though it and happiness will reign. Life is non without hurting because hurting is what makes life. We choose non our destiny, our joys, or our strivings. We live with the cognition that bad things happen to good people, and that they can acquire over it and travel on. To wallow in one? s hurting is non to populate because the felicity that life brings will non be recognized unless we realize that without the agony we would non hold felicity. Once analyzed, this rule of Euripidies? , holds much cogency non matter if it is learned or non.