Hecuba Response Paper Euripides’ Hecuba is a classic Greek tragedy that portrays a mother’s grief over the death of her daughter and the revenge she takes for the murder of her son. Over the course of the play, The Trojan Queen Hecuba (the main character and mother) loses her last two children Polybus and Polyxena, cruelly murdered by the Greeks, and becomes a weeping ghostly shadow of her former self. The play takes place at the end of the Trojan War, which means that the Greeks are in a state of prosperity and many Trojans have been taken as slaves and concubines. Hecuba loses her freedom, her dignity, and her family. It is then that she turns to revenge against Polymestor, who murdered her son. She calls on the Greek leader Agamemnon for…show more content… Polymestor feigns many excuses for the murder of Polydorus, but Hecuba convinces Agamemnon that he slew her son purely for the sake of the gold. Polymestor reveals a prophesy that Hecuba will die on the journey to Greece, and that her daughter Cassandra will die at the hands of Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra. At the close of the play, Polymestor is banished by Agamemnon to live out his remaining years alone on a desert island.Enlisting help from other slaves, Hecuba kills Polymestor's sons and stabs Polymestor's eyes. After her revenge, a wind comes granting travel for all- Agamemnon to a violent death, Odysseus to years of wandering, the women of Troy to servitude, and Hecuba herself to a drowning death.
This play has many different features that make it different from other Greek plays I’ve read- the characters alternate between singing and speaking, the dances seem to reflect the moods of the characters, and there exists in the dramatic action, a tension between emotion and reason; the Greeks seem much more reasonable and stoic than Hecuba, but she is better at expressing pain and grief with her long, impassioned speeches. This made my sympathies go back and forth between the two points of