The Deer Symbol Analysis

The sacrificial deer that takes Iphigeneia’s place at the end of the play represents the nobility, selflessness, and divine importance of sacrifice within Ancient Greek culture. At the end of the play, Iphigeneia stoically heads off to meet her father, Agamemnon, at the altar where she is to offer herself up as a human sacrifice to the goddess Artemis. The chorus of Chalkidian women who have been observing and commenting upon all the action in the play describe the bloody sacrifice that is soon to be made. However, after their lament is over, a messenger enters and summons Iphigeneia’s mother Clytemnestra from her tent. The messenger tells Clytemnestra that a miracle has occurred up at the altar: at the moment Agamemnon was about to bring the knife down upon his daughter’s throat, she vanished and was replaced by a deer—the symbol of Artemis, protectress of virgins and goddess of the hunt. The messenger declares that the good and pure Iphigeneia has been taken up to heaven to live among the gods and goddesses; Artemis sacrificed the deer herself “rather than stain her altar with [such] noble blood.” The deer is the animal most beloved by and sacred to the goddess herself, who is often depicted driving a chariot led by a team of them. The sacrificial deer, then, symbolically represents the magnitude of Iphigeneia’s sacrifice and the esteem it has earned her not only in the eyes of her fellow Greeks, but in those of the gods themselves.

Artemis, the very goddess who according to the prophet Kalchas demanded the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, sees how noble and selfless the girl is in giving herself up. The goddess then decides at the last minute to spare Iphigeneia and take the life of one of her favorite creatures instead, demonstrating Artemis’s own willingness to sacrifice something important to her as well as emphasizing the value of Iphigeneia’s decision to willingly give her life for the glory of Greece. The melodramatic ending of the play is a classic deus ex machina, or a plot device in which an impossible problem is quickly and neatly solved through an unlikely or unexpected occurrence, often the arrival of a god or goddess. As such, it was possibly meant to satirize or even indict the pursuit of glory through war and sacrifice. Though not mentioned within the play, it is important to note that according to myth, the winds in Aulis have been stalled by Artemis because Agamemnon accidentally killed a deer on his way to the port. With this in mind, it is doubly meaningful that Artemis, upon seeing the goodness of the sacrificial girl Agamemnon offers up, chooses to symbolically extend an offer of peace and kill one of her own beautiful deer instead.