Reviewing and comparing the element of violence in two adaptations: Electre (Jean Giraudoux) and flies (Jean Paul Sartre)

This article reviews the element of “violence” in two French plays; “Electre” (by Jean Giraudoux) and “Flies” (by Jean Paul Sartre), both of which are adopted from an ancient tragedy “Electre” and published about the Second World War. After two world wars in Europe, one of the issues that concern greatly the French dramatists was mythical subjects by the nature of violence which corresponded with critical and political attitudes of 20th century thinkers. At the time, ancient Greek mythology, and in particular the famous siege of Thebes and Trojan came to spotlight, in which the first city was demolished in dust and blood and the second one was fired. The story of “Electre”, which focuses on violence and revenge after the Trojan War, was the source of creation of many dramas which on one hand correspond with the escalation of violence by “Hitler” in World War II, and on the other hand contain many examples that could easily re flect a lot of intellectual and moral ideologies of the age. “Jean Giraudoux” and “Jean-Paul Sartre” are two of the French playwrights of twentieth century which used adaptation of these plays in the midst of and during the Second World War to offer their own thoughts. Jean Giraudoux in 1937 and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1943 released a new adaptation of “Electre” which discuss the conception of violence in deep. This article tries to compare these two plays structurally, and then it will follow by reviews on the conception of violence. On this research, at first, the researchers will have a quick look at the introduction of the story “Electre” in mythology and ancient Greek tragedies. Then two adaptations of Giraudoux and Sartre will be introduced and compared and finally the researchers will compare both plays from “nature of vio lence” perspective. It is worth noting this article is a comparative research and the research method is library research and descriptive. In this way, first of all the researchers briefly compare the structure of three remained tragedies from ancient Greece, then two adaptations of Giraudoux and Sartre will be compared in terms of form and content and finally reflection and nature of violence would be compared in both adaptations of these two French authors.