to loose, nor would she have given up that happiness. Andromache must suffer more in the play, when her baby boy, Astyanax, is taken from her and killed. She has lost at this point all strength to keep her son from execution, but even if she had not, its questionable whether or not she would have saved him. She states that: These are the gods who damn us to death. To me this statement says that she lacks the strength to determine who should die and who should live. Its not the choice of mortal men/women to condemn someone to death. Its possible that she is saying that because we are so inclined to strive for happiness we are unable look beyond the suffering and thus being caught up in our own pain we can not determine whos death is warranted. We, as mortals lack the ability to abstain from wallowing in our sorrow, and so we would have no one die in order to preserve the enjoyment of life. But as stated before, without suffering life would be with out joy, so someone, the gods, must choose our deaths, in order to preserve the will to live (for the mortals). With this realization Andromache is able to go on and serve another master, because she understand that without this misery she would not have had such a life in which she had the happiness. Admetos is setup to learn the a similar such lesson of life in the Alcestis. He is given the power over determining his death if he can find someone who will die for him. His wife, Alcestis, volunteers to take his place. Life to him is something that can be that can be avoided no matter the cost. He is immediately willing to allow his wife to die instead of him, because he does not understand how valuable life really is, and until he suffers, he will not. He has had no suffering up to this point, having inherited a huge kingdom and even been granted a god for a slave. So why would he feel that he should die, he has lived a life of privilege: why not continue in the same fashion? After her death, ...
