Everybody learns something in life, but not everybody learns something about life. This principle is easily demonstrated in the two characters of Andromache, from the play Trojan Women, and Admetos, form the Alcestis by Euripidies. While Andromache learns something about the meaning of life and death, Admetos does not; or at least he does not understand anything about life and death. Understanding is the key part of learning, without which one cannot actually learn.The need for understanding life is a pressing issue for the characters of Euripidies. Hecuba spends an entire play lamenting over her lack of understanding for life. She goes through many lines of the pain she has been caused in life, but she struggles when it comes to why this has happened. Could it be the fault of the Gods who have something against her? Or perhaps it was the because Hera was overcome by a hatred for beauty. None of these explanations are correct by the final scenes, but it is important to understand the thought process she went through, to reach the first conclusions, so that we can understand how Andromache came to her final conclusion: only through misery and strife do we learn to appreciate being alive; and the end of that life is not ours to decide, but the choice, rather, of the gods.Although Andromache has had a husband and her people slain, she eventually comes to the realization that she must live and go on. What is life if we dwell only in our misery? Should pain and suffering really bring us to the point of death as is the idea suggested by Hecuba: best now to die in the ruins and flames of our Fathers house (lines 1282 and 1283). If the dead, as Andromache states, have no perception of evil feel no grief; they cannot understand the suffering they went through because they dont remember it. It can then be inferred that those who are dead have no happiness. In so saying, Andromache realizes that without life she would not have had the happiness ...
