The Flies

The Flies (French: Les Mouches) is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1943. It is an adaptation of the Electra myth, previously used by the Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. The play recounts the story of Orestes and his sister Electra in their quest to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon, king of Argos, by killing their mother Clytemnestra and her husband Aegisthus, who had deposed and killed him.

Sartre incorporates an existentialist theme into the play, having Electra and Orestes engaged in a battle with Zeus and his Furies, who are the gods of Argos and the centerpiece for self-abnegating religious rituals. This results in fear and a lack of autonomy for Zeus's worshippers, who live in constant shame of their humanity.

Synopsis

Act 1

Orestes first arrives as a traveler with his tutor/slave, and does not seek involvement. Orestes has been traveling in a quest to find himself. He enters the story more as an adolescent with a girlish face, one who does not know his path or responsibility. He enters the city and introduces himself as Philebus ("lover of youth"), to disguise his true identity. Zeus has followed Orestes on his journey, and finally approaches him in Argos, introducing himself as Demetrios ("devoted to Demeter", a goddess who was in fact Zeus' own sister). Orestes has come on the eve of the day of the dead, a day of mourning to commemorate the killing of Agamemnon fifteen years prior. No townsperson aside from an aphasic "idiot boy" will speak to Orestes or his tutor because they are strangers and not mourning, remorseful or dressed in all black. Orestes meets his sister, Electra, and sees the terrible state that both she and the city are in. Electra has been treated as a servant girl since her mother and Aegisthus killed her father. She longs to exact her revenge and refuses to mourn for the sins and death of Agamemnon or of the townspeople.

Flies (disambiguation)

Flies are insects of the Order Diptera.

Flies may also refer to:

See also

Fly

True flies are insects of the order Diptera (from the Greek di = two, and ptera = wings). The most obvious distinction from other orders of insects is that a typical fly possesses a pair of flight wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax. (Some species of flies are exceptional in that they are secondarily flightless.) The only other order of insects bearing two true, functional wings plus any form of halteres are the Strepsiptera, and in contrast to the flies, the Strepsiptera bear their halteres on the mesothorax and their flight wings on the metathorax.

Taxonomy

The presence of a single pair of wings distinguishes most true flies from other insects with "fly" in their names, such as mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies, stoneflies, whiteflies, fireflies, alderflies, dobsonflies, snakeflies, sawflies, caddisflies, butterflies, or scorpionflies. However, some true flies have become secondarily wingless, for example many members of the superfamily Hippoboscoidea and some species that are inquilines in social insect colonies.

Flies (Asimov short story)

"Flies" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the June 1953 issue of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and later appeared in Asimov's collections Nightfall and Other Stories (1969).

The author's original title for the story was "King Lear, IV, i, 36–37", but Anthony Boucher, editor at the time, suggested a different title, which became "Flies".

Plot summary

A group of former college students meet at a reunion twenty years after graduation and discuss their achievements. One of the ex students, now an animal behaviorist, is tormented by his ability to read the thoughts of his former friends in their small behavioral tics and gestures. He reflects on his life and research, as well the pain it has brought him, while one of his friends, a chemist and insecticide researcher, fights off the flies that continually crowd around him. Unbeknownst to all but the behaviorist, the flies' behavior is caused by their belief that he is a deity.

Dangerous Visions

Dangerous Visions (ISBN 0-425-06176-0) is a science fiction short story anthology edited by Harlan Ellison, published in 1967.

A path-breaking collection, Dangerous Visions helped define the New Wave science fiction movement, particularly in its depiction of sex in science fiction. Writer/editor Al Sarrantonio writes how Dangerous Visions "almost single-handedly [...] changed the way readers thought about science fiction."

Contributors to the volume included 20 authors who had won, or would win, a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, or BSFA award, and 16 with multiple such wins. Ellison introduced the anthology both collectively and individually while authors provided afterwords to their own stories.

Awards and nominations

The stories and the anthology itself were nominated for and received many awards. "Gonna Roll the Bones" by Fritz Leiber received both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award for Best novelette, whilst Philip K. Dick's submission "Faith of Our Fathers" was a nominee for the Hugo in the same category. Philip José Farmer tied for the Hugo Award for Best Novella for "Riders of the Purple Wage". Samuel R. Delany won the Nebula for Best Short Story for "Aye, and Gomorrah..." Harlan Ellison received a special citation at the 26th World SF Convention for editing "the most significant and controversial SF book published in 1967."