Free Custom «Honor in Hippolytus» Essay Paper

The events depicting honor forms a core part of Hippolytus. The desire to honor sets a platform for characters in the play to swear allegiance and revere a god over another. This is notable at the opening of the play when Aphrodite, the Goddess of love says that Hippolytus has rejected her by swearing chastity and hardly shows her reverence in any way. Hippolytus reveres and honors Artemis, the Goddess of hunt. Actually, quest for honor sets the stage for the first essence of conflict in the play. This is because Aphrodite conceived a dirty plan of vengeance on Hippolytus starting by inspiring his stepmother Phaedra to fall in love with him. The quest for honor from the Goddess of love prompted her to make Phaedra to develop love feelings for Hippolytus after who then decides hide her passion in order to prevent kind of shame befalling her in the community. It illustrates how much that society valued honor to the extent of sacrificing scrupulous passion and mere feelings. In fear of the possibility of being dishonored by Hippolytus by sharing her story, she takes her own life to in the bid of ensuring that Troezen still regard her as a woman of virtue and honor.

 

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This side of the passage in very significant in comparing the society the author set his play in and the contemporary one. Honor was at the epicenter of everything both spiritually, as to which God to revere, and relationally. It contrast the contemporary world where honor is something people hardly elevate in their lives both relationally and spiritually. Presently, compromise and deception is the business of the day with even honor at individual level not of great consideration. In addition, this situation in the novel shows the kind of society Euripides ever desired to exist. Therefore, honor is portrayed as a virtue that is due to shape the personality and life process of people even in the society today.