Orestes
The character of Orestes has taken on life in modern retellings and contemporary updating that have firmly established him as the mechanism for driving the plot of a human trying desperately to run away from his own mistakes. As these new versions of the Oresteia myth have evolved, so has Orestes taken on a deeper symbolism of not just a person trying to escape from past transgressions of sin or morality, but in the chase a figure trying to run toward his own identity. Orestes thus is infused with the symbolism of the person whose past has moved to them to flight in search of who they really are.
The Red Carpet
Things start off symbolically bad for Agamemnon, though he remains blinded by his own sense of self-satisfaction to be capable of seeing it. The red carpet over which he trods with an awareness of his own greatness verging uncomfortably into the realm of divinity is symbolic in a twofold way. In the first place, such an honor has until now been reserved for the gods, making the crimson walkway a figurative pathway to godliness. Since the gods never take kindly to such hubris, the deeper figurative meaning lies in the color: he doesn’t know it, but Agamemnon is a dead man walking a river of his own blood.
Nets
The recurring symbolic image of the net which is used for the opposite effect of personification. Instead, the nets dehumanize the characters to lower them to the level of animals—primitive creatures at that—easily caught up in the web designed by others to trap them. The trapping of humans as simple creatures becomes a repetitive device that reveals the hubris of humans as well as their predatory nature.
Light from Darkness
Images of darkness transforming into light peppers the trilogy with both literal and figurative appearances. Together the literal and figurative taking on a much deeper symbolism related to the ultimate theme of the plays: the sanctioning of Athenian law which rejects the traditions of vengeance as the proper dispensation of justice.
Serpent
Serpent imagery also populates the Oresteia as a political symbol representing the transformation of the system of justice. The law as it stands is situated in almost Biblical terms as a once thriving garden invaded by the agents of darkness. Revenge and the murder of close family members out of ambition have transformed the promise into a domain of immorality. The serpent becomes the symbol of this intrusion into the promise of light and its corruption into darkness.
