Flies

Summary

Oreste enters to Argos, its birthplace invaded by the Mouche S. It is made call Philèbe and is accompanied by its tutor. It meets a Peuple there tortured: each one is corroded by the repentance of its crimes, to the sovereigns, Clytemnestre and Égisthe, mother and father-in-law of Oreste which assassinated his/her father Agamemnon on his return of the Trojan War.

Electra, sister of Oreste reduced in slavery to the palate, tries to raise a revolt of the people against this eternal penitence, but Jupiter, god of the flies and the Mort, prevents some.

Involved by his/her sister with whom it revealed her true identity, Oreste decides to avenge Agamemnon by assassinating Égisthe and Clytemnestre. Jupiter succeeds in convincing neither Oreste to give up its crime, nor Égisthe not to let itself kill. After the murder, the brother and the sister take refuge in the temple of Apollon, under the threat of the Jupiter flies.

This last obtains finally the repentance of Electra, but not that of Oreste which leaves Argos, releasing its new subjects of their remorses and the flies.

Topics approached

The part proposes to the reader (or to the spectators) of many lines of thinking:

Repentance

The inhabitants of Argos are locked up in a perpetual repentance which plank the Masochisme: the intrigue proceeds at the time of the All Souls' Day, which is exhorted to come to torment the alive ones to make them pay their faults.

For Oreste, to regret a crime is an average coward to demolish itself some, he chooses to fully assume his double murder which he regards as Juste.

Should of course be brought closer the final scene, where Oreste leaves while assuming all the crimes the inhabitants Argos, of the repurchase of the human sins by the Christ in the Évangile; and the end of the part carries the interrogation on the possibility of carrying the faults of another.

The last scene shows the two opposite reactions which one can have vis-a-vis a crime: the remorse and the return to the " troupeau" , attitude adopted by Electra; or on the contrary the choice to assume its acts and of living with. Oreste chose the second way. This is why it is released from its burden (its destiny) and was not encumbered of a second: the remorse.

But Oreste finally decides to be sacrificed for its people. He flees, continued by Erinnyes and releases the town of their presence, he only leaves the men opposite their condition, it is with them to build itself by their acts, indeed he does not become a new idol because, according to Sartre, the only means of making the men responsible is to take off the veil of their illusions to them.

Freedom

" The painful secrecy of the gods and the kings, it is that the men are libres" , explains Jupiter in Égisthe.

Indeed, Jupiter intervenes in the part as soon as somebody calls upon it (Electra then Oreste) to make a " miracle" , but any capacity loses on that which is known free. Of the same Égisthe could not control if its people were aware of the impotence of the sovereign. This is why they must prevent Oreste of " contaminer" the people (the " troupeau"). But these people seem to take pleasure in his penitence, and disallow the proposal for a freedom which Electra makes him. One can see a symbolic system political, present here throughout work. critical Sartre tyranny and the fact that it deprives the people of freedoms, while highlighting the role of the people himself which contributes to this dispossession.

It is because freedom has a cost: it is it which makes of Oreste a character completely isolated, given up in turn by its tutor, Jupiter, its sister and her people. But Oreste is released and can control itself. It does not have any more gods above his head.

Sartre invites the reader with introspection here. He makes him become aware of his capacity on itself.

The political scope

Sartre, by writing this part was given for goal to fight against the legitimation of the mode in place, i.e. the repentance conveyed by Catholicism, combined Nazis. It is necessary to think of giving this part in its historical context, by allotting to Oreste the features of the superman nietzschéen or of the Antichrist it wanted to give again courage with the French people whose situation is found easily at Argiens… Égisthe and its Jupiter ally represent the duet Pétain/Catholicism which advised with benevolence " the duty of collaborer" ( the Cross , January 4th, 1941). Oreste is thus obviously the resistant type which restores what should have been and removes an unjust irrefutable fact.

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