63 pages • 2 hours read
Alex MichaelidesThe Fury
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known as “The Queen of Crime” and is the author of 66 detective novels, some of which have been fundamental in shaping the modern detective novel. One of her most iconic novels, And Then There Were None, features a group of people stranded on an isolated island, murdered one by one, all the while knowing that the murderer is one of them. With a later novel, Murder on the Orient Express, Christie created the same isolated setting for her characters on a train stranded by a blizzard. Christie is also famous for creating iconic detectives like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
In the opening pages of The Fury, the protagonist, Elliot, brings Christie’s name and work into the story, telling the reader, “Thanks to Agatha Christie, we all know how this kind of story is meant to play out: a baffling crime, followed by a dogged investigation, an ingenious solution—then, if you’re lucky, a twist in the tale” (6). However, he quickly follows that with the protest that “this is a true story, not a work of fiction. It’s about real people, in a real place. If anything, it’s a whydunit—a character study, an examination of who we are; and why we do the things we do” (6). In addition, as The Fury diverges from a more traditional murder mystery, Elliot lays out an alternate story that features “a Greek version of Agatha Christie’s Belgian” (162), a reference to Hercule Poirot, before explaining how different his own story is. With these references by Elliot, author Alex Michaelides both acknowledges the similarities in setting and premise to Christie’s iconic novels and differentiates his novel as being about real people. Michaelides uses Christie’s well-known plot and story conventions to create expectations in a reader familiar with the genre and then subvert that expectation by moving his story in a different direction.
Literary Context: Greek Tragedy and Myth
Although his most obvious nod to Greek culture and history is through his choice of setting The Fury on a Greek island, Michaelides also utilizes references to Greek myth, as well as elements of Greek tragedy, to deepen the meaning of his mystery.
Greek tragedy traditionally has a very regular structure. Each play features a prologue, in which a character introduces the story, and an exodus, in which a character concludes the story. Each of these scenes features direct address, whereby the character speaks directly to the audience and is meant to provide additional perspective on the events of the play—either those that are upcoming or those that have just occurred. The play is split into several acts, and in each of these, it is common for a character to again address the audience either at the beginning or end of the act, or both. Michaelides designed his novel to mimic this structure, and Elliot, the first-person protagonist, does directly address the audience throughout, but specifically in the Prologue, Epilogue, and several chapters that open or conclude acts.
Another element of Greek tragedy that Michaelides utilizes is the tragic hero who possesses a fatal flaw, known as “hamartia.” This fatal flaw is an element in an otherwise noble character that causes their downfall, but in a manner that is far more severe than their actions might warrant. Michaelides plays with this concept, framing both Elliot and Lana as tragic heroes whose fatal flaws lead to imprisonment and death, respectively.
Michaelides also references Greek myth and drama casually with Kate’s current role in Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon, in which she plays Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, who murders him to avenge his murder of their daughter. He strengthens this connection to Greek drama by establishing a ruin on Aura that was formerly an amphitheater, in which Lana’s staged murder takes place.
Michaelides also deepens his references to the strange, strong wind that envelops Aura occasionally by referring to it as, in Agathi’s grandmother’s words, “to menos, which means ‘the fury’ in English” (24). The Furies, or the Eumenides, are Greek goddesses of vengeance—people bring complaints to them, and the offenders are punished. The name of the island itself, Aura, also evokes Greek mythology; Aura is a minor Greek goddess of the breeze that, as Elliot points out, “belie[s] the ferocity of the wind, and of the goddess herself” (24). With these references, Michaelides deepens both character development and thematic meaning in his novel.
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