Sunday, November 16, 2008

expansion of the comment and quazi-historian review of the play

ok, so i just commented on J'mag's blog and thought, wow, i should expound on that in my own blog cuz it's totally a mini comentary! ok, so here it is:

J'mag asked the question why didn't the womyn use their children as a means of stopping the war rather than abstaining from sex. so, historical context: Greek society was militaristic, generally speaking (yeah, i just brought geography into it!). because they lived in a militraristic society, fighting was a common thing and so was the idea that the men would have stopped fighting based on the affect that it had on their children and that their children missed them is kind of rediculous. the idea of military service wasn't like it is 2day. they didn't think, omg he's gonna have 2 go 2 war and he's gonna get shot and killed! no, these ppl thought, ok, time 4 u 2 sign up n go fight n if u die, well, that's the god's will. ok, maybe they weren't that cruel, but it wan't like 2day that u sign up for the military and maybe go to war, u signed up n u went n u were IN THE ARMY no reserves stuff. the society didn't function around the idea of loss of life like we do, they were kinda like Stalin in that regard, it was that winning of the war, not the loss of life that they cared about. (i just realized how many of us talked about Stalin in these blogs, hmm, IB Global anyone?) i think that's a big difference in our reading of the play and the society that it was written for. they thought of military service as normal and we think of it as sacrificial.

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