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BROAD ANSWER FROM "THE BIRDS' || CRITICAL ANALYSIS



The Birds has been extensively analyzed over the years, and a great number of different allegorical interpretations have been offered, including identification of the Athenian people with the birds and their enemies with the Olympian gods. Whereas Pisthetaerus has been interpreted as a metaphor for Alcibiades, an Athenian statesman, Euelpides is one of the politician flatterers. The 'agon' in The Birds is conventional in form but there is no antagonist, the two main characters are Pisthetaerus and his friend Euelpideș, with Pisthetaerus delivering a speech and Euelpides providing supportive comments. The Euelipides has been relegated to an inferior position largely due to Euelpides' willingness to concede the initiative and leadership to Pisthetaerus.
The play begins with two middle-aged men, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides, stumbling across a hillside wilderness in search of Tereus, the legendary Thracian king who was once transformed into the hoopoe bird. After some explanatory conversation, Pisthetaerus has the idea that the birds should build a city-state between heaven and earth, where they can intercept the scarifies smoke of offerings made by human to the gods, re-establishing the original supremacy of the birds over both.
A large and threatening-looking bird, who turns out to be the Hoopoe’s servant, demands to know what they are up to and accuses them of being bird-catchers. He is persuaded to fetch his master and the Hoopoe himself appears The Hoopoe tells of his life with the birds, and their easy existence of eating and loving. Pisthetaerus suddenly has the brilliant idea that the birds should stop flying about like simpletons and instead build themselves a great city in the sky. This would not only allow them to lord it over men, it would also enable them to blockade the Olympian gods, starving them into submission
Pisthetaerus explains how the birds were the original gods and advises them to regain their lost powers and privileges from upstart Olympians. The audience of birds is won over and they urge the Athenians to lead them against the uprising gods. While the Chorus delivers a brief account of the genealogy of the birds, establishing their claim to divinity ahead of the Olympians, and cites some of the benefits of being a bird, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides go to chew on a magical root of the Hoopoe that will transform them into birds. When they return, they watched unconvincing resemblance to a bird; they begin to organize the construction of their city-in-the-sky, which they name "Cloud Cuckoo Land".
Pisthetaerus leads a religious ceremony in honour of birds as the new gods, during which he is pestered by a variety of unwelcome human visitors looking for employment in the new city, including a young poet looking to become the city’s official poet, an oracle-monger with prophecies for sale, a famous geometer offering a set of town-plans, an imperial inspector from Athens and a statute-seller. As these intruders try to impose Athenian ways upon his bird kingdom, Pisthetaerus rudely dispatches them.
Pisthetaerus comes to know that the Olympians are now starving because men's offerings are no longer reaching them. He, however, has been advised by Prometheus not to negotiate with the gods until Zeus surrenders both his sceptre and his girl, Basileia(Sovereignty), the real power in Zeus' household. Finally, a delegation from Zeus himself arrives, composed of Zeus' brother Poseidon, the oafish Heracles and the even more oafish god of the barbarian Triballians. Pisthetaerus easily deceives Heracles and Poseidon and Pisthetaerus' terms accepted. Pisthetaerus is proclaimed king of the gods and is presented with the lovely Sovereignty as his mistress.
The friendship between Pisthetaerus and Euelpides is portrayed quite realistically in spite of the unreality of their adventure, and is marked by their good-humoured teasing of each other's failings and by the ease with which they work together in difficult situations. In this and other plays, Aristophanes demonstrates his ability to depict humanity convincingly in the most unconvincing of settings.

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