Euripides’ Helen and the Trauma of Survival

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 argues that Euripides’ Helen dramatizes the trauma of survival after a military disaster that killed many soldiers abroad. Helen takes a different approach from the earlier tragic homecoming stories by giving both husband and wife a future together after the events of the play. Yet far from being a simple romantic comedy of adventure and escape, the novel plot of Helen requires its protagonists to navigate together the difficult condition of survival after traumatic loss. This crisis of survival is faced by marginal characters in earlier homecoming plays—the Chorus or Hyllus or Amphitryon—since they are the only ones left standing at the end. Helen instead casts its protagonists, and particularly Helen, as survivors of losses that continue to haunt them, as well as virulent stories that challenge their sense of their own memory and identity. This chapter traces this crisis of survival through formal tropes such as repetition, doubled scenes, and performances that re-enact past trauma. Helen shows how these repetitions and returns can function as ways of working through past trauma by changing the survivor’s relationship to the traumatic experience.