Agamemnon
The characters of this play are placed in paralleled juxtaposition with the characters in the tragedy by Aeschylus which plays a major part in the play. This juxtaposition is considerably ironic since the parallel places the weak Andrew as the equivalent of the Greek warrior-king Agamemnon.
Dead Man Walking
Another ironic component to the parallel of this play to Greek tragedy is that Agamemnon is actually killed as a result of his wife Clytemnestra’s plotting. In this updated version of that bizarre love triangle the wife succeeds only in figuratively killing her husband—he is referenced throughout using death imagery—and ironically does not wind up with the lover, but in the scene which closes the play reveals that she is doomed to join him in death-in-life until literal death do they part.
Parting in Sour Sorrow
The love that will tear Millie and Frank apart is ironically unexpected. The relationship comes undone as a result of Frank apparently getting his first true glimpse into the abyss where Millie’s soul should be. He breaks up with her due to a sudden tenderness of emotion toward Andrew in his understanding of the monstrous life he must be living under Millie’s dominion.
Cricket
When one thinks of academic institutions putting the interests of athletics over scholarship, one normally thinks of American high schools giving student athletes a pass and colleges where the football coach earns more than the university’s President. Stuffing English boarding schools is certainly not the first thing to come to mind. It is doubly ironic, then, that Andrew’s stature and long standing at the school is pushed aside to offer his speaking position at the awards ceremony to the newbie simply because he has improved the school’s cricket team.
Don’t Try Suicide
Millie engages one of the time-tested weapons of the adulterous lover afraid of losing her boy-toy: she threatens suicide. Of course, it is not a genuine threat, but more of an offhand remark: “I think, if you don’t [come to Bradford], I’ll kill myself.” Nevertheless, the intention is clearly a kind of emotional blackmail. This proves to be ironic once it is revealed once and for all that Millie is incapable of any genuine emotion. Sociopaths are among the least likely members of the population to ever commit suicide, but are very likely to wield the threat of it as a weapon.
