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Sophocles was a Greek playwright residing approximately around 400 BC. He along with his two contemporaries, Aeschylus and Euripides, are a few of the most essential Ancient Greek playwrights. Aeschylus, that was older than Sophocles, was the big man around town (or at least, the huge playwright around town) when Sophocles made his entry onto the theatre scene.

In the tender age of 28, Sophocles bested his eponymous taking first prize from the significant theatre competition of the year, establishing himself as a real player in the theatrical scene. Although he made over 120 plays in his lifetime, sadly hardly any are still around for us to read today.

Sophocles made some notable changes to the status quo of Greek theatre, most especially popularizing single, freestanding plays as compared to the lengthy trilogies preferred by authors such as Aeschylus. There are also differences of design and procedure between the three playwrights. Euripides marginalized the Chorus increasingly over the course of his profession, until it was nearly tangential. Aeschylus was far more old school and constantly had the Chorus front and centre. Sophocles was somewhere in between the other two, and that you'll see when you read Electra. To make things a little more juicy, bear in mind that there was a significant competition going between Euripides and Sophocles. Sophocles was the more conservative and usually sought to confirm mythic traditions and personalities with his work. Euripides, not too much. In terms of dramatic construction, Sophocles enjoyed tight plausible plots, while Euripides wasn't reluctant to loosen up a little.

It tells the story of a young girl awaiting her brother to get there so that they can avenge their father's death by murdering their mother and her new husband.

These are many unique interpretations of the fantasy, and each of three of the playwrights -- Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus -- composed a play that dealt with this iconic fantasy at a slightly different manner. Aeschylus includes the story from his play The Libation Bearers, the second section of a longer trilogy. Aeschylus's chief concern was the ethical implications of murdering one's own household members. At the conclusion of the play, the Furies wind up chasing Orestes to get matricide (murdering his mother). On the other hand, Euripides does not necessarily condemn the killing elephants as strongly as Aeschylus does. Sophocles's Electra delivers a third interpretation. To begin with, Sophocles picked Electra rather than Orestes as the primary character.

Some think that, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles was concerned with the ethical implications of matricide. Others think that he followed Homer in thinking that the murder was a noble and just behave. There's only one way to determine... (Yes, we are speaking about reading the play).

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