(English) Text Response Essay - Women of Troy

[TakoYee]

Hello! In the spoiler is a Text Response for Women of Troy with the prompt: "Euripides highlights the plight of those who cannot protect themselves when war is lost. Discuss." Any feedback would be much appreciated!

Spoiler

Euripides highlights the plight of those who cannot protect themselves when war is lost. Discuss.

Since the days of classical Greek theatre, plays have served as vehicles to highlight the anguish suffered by the vulnerable of society during conflict, and Euripides’ “Women of Troy” is no exception. Euripides implores his audience to delve into the meaning of vulnerability as he brutally condemns both the feeble and naturally strong characters of Hellenic society. Indeed, he even challenges the notion of triumph in conflict as the victorious are also punished and cannot protect themselves from the consequences of their violence and immorality. However, it is through each character’s merciless torment, in spite of social standing, that Euripides amplifies the callous nature of invasive and futile conflict.

The most obvious iteration of suffering is manifested in the female characters of the play. Surrounded in the “puddles of blood” that “smear the sanctuaries of all the gods,” these women are the primary victims of a senseless conflict. It is not only Hecuba who “drowns in a sea of misery” but it is all the women who suffer immense traumatic emotional and physical loss. Considered the most vulnerable and feeble in society during this conservative era, Euripides mostly subjects them to the most heinous of fates. Indeed, Cassandra the consecrated virgin is viciously violated and turned into a concubine, a debauched mockery of her coveted position as a Priestess of Athena. Helen is chastised for her scandalous promiscuity, yet tyrannical, authoritarian men such as Agamemnon and Menelaus are lauded for their carelessness for monogamy. Yet, in spite of this, Euripides still confronts this double standard and ironically punishes the most protected men within society: soldiers. Shielded by their own immense strength and apparent valor, their physical prowess is not doubted in the slightest. However, as “officers of his kind...hated by everyone” Talthybius embodies the emotionally troubled soldier who has been forced to endure the immorality that he himself did not know he could possess. This itself is an undervalued plight that some have chosen to ignore in favor of the women’s more blatant “howling and pain no animal can endure.” But Euripides does not dismiss this and portrays him to be a hesitant man who himself is aware that there is no decency in the barbaric murder of child. Coming to grips with their maliciousness, Talthybius is portrayed as someone who can protect themselves on a battlefield but not from the consequences of his lustful superior’s senseless conflict.

Euripides spares no victims in this tragedy as the victors are also considered vulnerable and condemned to face their own personal trauma. The prideful and wanton Menelaus is forced to endure the loss of his soldiers whose “blood and guts have been tested and spent” to reclaim his wife. Whilst some may argue that his life revolved around Helen, a woman who “makes men’s eyes her prisoners,” the retribution he seeks to provide his troops by having her “executed in payment of blood” by his people indicates that this is a man who feels sympathy for their loss of life. In spite of his powerful authority, Menelaus must face the idiocy of his choices and endure both his pain and his people’s pain. The only figures to be spared of a plight are the divinity. Euripides does not highlight their struggle for there is none but instead chooses to emphasize their role in influencing people’s suffering as implied in the fleet’s and city’s destruction. Their capability to adapt a “cavalier change of mind” in the face of minor displeasure and erratic unpredictability deems them to be both fearsome and transcendent to mortals. However, it is this supernatural nature of the gods that places them on a pedestal, thus allowing Euripides to further suppress the low and vulnerable as seen in Hecuba’s anguished cry, “Oh you gods, what good were you to us! Betrayers!”

But this play’s barbarous agony is not without reason. Euripides condemns all these mortal characters to endure these atrocious fates to suggest that conflict is merciless and does not discriminate which victims must suffer the most. Hence, the mere notion of initiating such invasive expeditions is lambasted and considered futile. Indeed, Cassandra’s impassioned monologue highlights the nobility in “fighting for their fatherland” in contrast to the dishonor of invasive violence, as most have given up the “simplest of pleasures” and died on a land far from their own. The audience of his time is implored to explore the illogical nature of prideful and unnecessary conflict for the literal winner of such a war is made to suffer a fate many consider worse than death. Yet Euripides continues to challenge the norms of his time and urges the audience to reconsider the concept of vulnerability. Those who cannot protect themselves are no longer only the women and children but also encompasses the victims of conflict, their husbands, their soldiers, and their esteemed leaders. By brutally punishing everyone, Euripides warns his audience that it is not an impossibility that even those of the highest standing can be “throned in the dust”; what more of a mere mortal of the middle class.

“The Women of Troy” explores the affliction of the vulnerable and acts as a modem through which the audiences are presented the struggles of the victims of a senseless war. However, Euripides’ tragic play ultimately asserts that there are in fact no victors in invasive conflict and certainly no person spared the title of unprotected and the sufferings of the vulnerable.

[s110820]

Hi!

I can definitely proofread, edit and annotate your response for you! But in the mean time, can you please let me know your word limit and when it's due please?

Thank you and much appreciated,

Darcy Dillon.

[TakoYee]

Hi!

I can definitely proofread, edit and annotate your response for you! But in the mean time, can you please let me know your word limit and when it's due please?

Thank you and much appreciated,

Darcy Dillon.

Thank you so much for the offer, it's really kind of you! This is actually just a practice piece for a SAC tomorrow ( I won't know the prompt till then!) but I don't really mind when I can receive the feedback because any will be much appreciated and useful for future pieces anyway. I was looking for some final thoughts and any polishing I could do and I believe the word limit would be 1000 words

[s110820]

Oh okay, that's all good! I still have a bit of feedback for you:

• You need to contextualise your quotations. Who says this? What relevance do they have to the plot/text? Are they the protagonist, antagonist or side-character? Please be a bit more specific.
• At the moment, you are at the “surface level” of analysis. In order to get discerning marks, you need to “dive deeper” into your chosen quotations and how the authors/composers enable the audience to challenge/reflect on the concept of vulnerability. Think of it as if it is a treasure hunt. You need to pull apart your quotation to find the “treasure” of the aesthetic features and stylistic devices, as well as discuss how these features and devices affect the audience.
• When you analyse, please think about the What-So What analysis cycle where:
  
  •    What: refers to the quotation and the contextualisation of your chosen quotation.
  •    So-What: refers to the “pulling apart” or “breaking down” of your chosen quotation by analysing your aesthetic features/stylistic devices, as well as how these features/devices affect the audiences’ positioning of the concepts/main ideas/themes of the texts.
   So-How: refers to how you refer back to your thesis. This is really important as one of the main features of having a coherent essay is to always link back to your thesis after each of your So-Whats.
  
  Although in the VCE curriculum, you may or may not use this method of analysis or essay structure, however, I find it extremely useful to structure my own analysis/essay, as well as keep track of my ideas and my thesis.
  
  3.   Authorial Intentions -> At the moment, your authorial intentions are subtle but not obvious. What I mean by this is that while you are constantly referring back to your author, you need to be explicit in what you are saying. For example, you also need to discuss how the author’s choices (intentions) enable the narrative, characters, plot etc. to be framed in a certain way.
  4.   Reader positioning -> At the moment, your reader positioning is a bit of a concern as you do not have any in your essay so far. To improve, I would recommend that after each point in your paragraphs, discuss how the readers are positioned by the author’s intentions and then link back to your thesis.
  5.   Linking back to thesis -> At the moment, this is also a bit of a problem as you never link back to your thesis in your essay. To improve the cohesion and clarity in your writing, I would recommend linking back to your thesis after your discussion of the readers’ positioning as this is an extremely important characteristic of an effective and discerning analytical essay!
  
  Furthermore, it would be beneficial to have a mixture of both your perspective of the text as well as the author's perspectives/intentions, especially as the balance of these characteristics is extremely important in any analytical essay. For example, I would like you to consider and write about how does Euripides emphasise/highlight the plight of those who cannot protect themselves? What aesthetic features/stylistic devices does he use to construct this idea? How/why does he construct women to be vulnerable/weak/unprotected? (For this one, it would be crucial for you to think about the historical context of his narrative, as well as the cultural attitudes, assumptions and values of women during this time/era).
  
  It is also extremely important to explicitly name the aesthetic features/stylistic devices that you are analysing in response to the prompt as it enhances the reader's understanding of the text and your analysis!
  
  

Hopefully, this helps! But of course, if you do have any other questions, queries or concerns, please don't hesitate to ask me as I would be more than happy to clarify what I mean for you.

Have a great week and kind regards,

Darcy Dillon.

[TakoYee]

Thank you so much for the feedback s110820!!

All your comments have been extremely thoughtful and I thank you for pointing out alot of the flaws in the piece because I'll be able to improve from there. I was just wondering when implementing reader positioning in the essay (which I completely forgot about  ) what would be the best way to go about it whilst also linking back to my thesis? Would you have any examples?

Thank you again, I don't have access to feedback often so this is awesome!

[s110820]

Hi,

It was no problem at all! I was more than happy to help

However, my best advice to you in terms of where you should put your reader positioning in the essay is after each main point. After you have exhausted your analysis of a point, put your reader positioning straight after your last analysis sentence. And then, in the sentence after your reader positioning sentence, write a link back to your thesis. In terms of the "best way" to link back to your thesis, I would recommend reusing specific words from your thesis in the last sentence of your paragraph.

For example, if your thesis was:

Hence, despite Shakespeare’s “positive” narrative of human behaviour in The Tempest, Atwood takes a more pragmatic approach to the representation of grief and trauma. For example, Atwood mirrors the readers’ social and psychological milieu to construct how the characteristics of vengeance, power and metaphorical “imprisonment” will always characterise human behaviour.

I would write: Thus, as a result, Atwood's more "pragmatic" narrative of grief and trauma characterises the metaphorical imprisonment of her characters as an inevitable symptom of human behaviour.

Hopefully this helps

Have a great week and kind regards,

Darcy Dillon.