AG -- Cassandra the seer has a vision of the murder about to take place: "Home cursed of God! Bear witness unto me, Ye visioned woes within -- The blood-stained hands of them that smite their kin…!" Clytemnestra has determined to murder Agamemnon -- it is her revenge; and Cassandra sees it as a curse about to be carried out.
EL -- "O my father Agamemnon! In Hades art thou laid, butchered by thy wife and Aegisthus…" Thus wails Electra, fueling the hatred in her blood that will not be satisfied till it spills out the blood of the woman who murdered Agamemnon. Thoughts of murder consume Electra.
5. Abstraction:
DD -- Robespierre begins to see that he is living in a nightmare reality: his dreams seem real and what is real seems like a dream: "What's walking then but a clear dream? Are we night wanderers, and all our doings dreams? Hard, definite purposeful dreams? Who can blame us for that? Our souls in an hour act more in thought than the clumsy machines, our bodies, could bring off in as many years." Robespierre is lost in an abstraction -- he cannot quite reconcile his fancy with the horrible reality he is pursuing.
KC -- Christophe is lost in his abstracted state: He refuses to attack as Magny advises. Magny attempts to convince Christophe that all will be lost if he does not get his head out of the clouds, but Christophe only replies: "We have to believe it's possible, Magny." Magny answers: "I only hope that your eyes aren't opened too late." Christophe's eyes will be opened -- but as Magny fears, they will be opened too late.
MC -- Abstraction comes in the form of the song, repeated throughout: "Christians, awake! Winter is gone! The snows depart! Dead men sleep on! Let all of you who still...
Relationship between Rhetoric and War:
AG -- The Chorus provides the Rhetoric and the kings of Greece the War: Aeschylus shows are the two are twined about one another: language and deed are one -- and the high-minded nature of the chorus reflects the high-minded nature of the kings' glory: they are ambitious in the quest for justice: "Go forth to Troy, the eagles seemed to cry -- And the sea-kings obeyed the sky-kings' word, When on the right they soared across the sky…"
KC -- Christophe carries himself away with his own rhetoric, vowing to restore his honor through war. He contemplates the noise and reckons it thunder and immediately his thoughts leap to: "Thousands of half-naked blacks vomited up by the sea one night…Thunder: power to speak, to make, to construct, to build, to be, to name, to bind, to remake." Christophe believes that by the very power of his voice (which is like thunder) he will restore their place and dignity.
DD -- The Revolutionaries deliver the best rhetoric for carrying out violence. Robespierre leads the citizens on to more violent deeds thus: first he empathizes with them, then he compliments them, then he boasts of them -- and all the while wraps them around his finger to do more of his bidding: "Poor people! Virtuous people! You do your duty, for you sacrifice your enemies. People, you are great! Your voice is made known in thunderclaps and in the flash of lightning…Come then, people, follow to the Jacobins…On our enemies we will hold bloody assize. To the Jacobins!"
