Oscar Serlin's The Soldier's Dilemma is a fictional adaptation of Aeschylus's Eumenides. His play re-imagines the themes of divided loyalties to kin and family, themes that are central to the Oresteia trilogy and the choice Orestes makes, when he kills his mother, Clytemnestra, to avenge his father, Agamemnon. In this new play, the trilogy's ancient settings, Argos, Delphi, and Athens are adapted both in terms of time and place. Orestes's matricide and his trial inspire this modern retelling of the aftermath of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March 1968 through the fictional court-martial trial of Private Francis Orestes, a soldier who kills two of his fellow soldiers, after they perpetrate atrocities against the non-combatant population of one of the hamlets in that area, fictionally renamed as designation “Agamemnon.” In adapting the cycle of kin-killing and bloodguilt of the royal family of Argos, Oscar Serlin revisits the events...
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April 01 2022
Foreword to Oscar Serlin's The Soldier's Dilemma
Illinois Classical Studies (2022) 47 (1): 177–178.
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Angeliki Tzanetou; Foreword to Oscar Serlin's The Soldier's Dilemma. Illinois Classical Studies 1 April 2022; 47 (1): 177–178. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/23285265.47.1.08
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