Research Paper on:
Dionysus and Pentheus

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
which is constantly set against Pentheus insistence that human beings can follow one path or another, but never both at once. The duality of the god is both praised and  feared in the text, as Dionysus protects his followers and wreaks a dreadful punishment on those such as Pentheus who refuse to acknowledge his mysteries and his divinity.  Dionysus has achieved his godhood through a double birth, in  the course of which his mother has been destroyed so that he can be born a second time from the thigh of Zeus: rather in the same way as Athena  sprang fully-armed from the head of the god, so Dionysus comes from his second birth complete with his divine attributes of adult form, horns, and wreaths of snakes. The next  example of duality which we see is the dramatic irony of the form which the god takes in his dialogue with Pentheus. He appears as an ordinary mortal, meek in  speech and appearance, but the audience is aware, as the other characters are not, what his true nature is.  Consequently, all Pentheuss questions, and his attempts to present himself as a ruler and fount of wisdom, are tinged  with heavy irony from the audiences point of view. There is a further dichotomy between the way that Pentheus attempts to present himself, and the underlying nature which he tries  to conceal. He is insistent on the validity of his own somewhat repressive attitudes to sexuality and religion: in effect, he constantly seeks to deny and suppress the powerful natural