The tragedy of Medea illustrates the actions of a woman
scorned. Left by her husband and her heart destroyed she chooses how to best
get back at him for his unloving deed. This play showcases the wits of a woman
who has been hurt and the dark thoughts that she has in her mind. In the
opening of this play, Jason, her husband, has left her for a more prominent
woman in the city. Medea, left alone with her children, will choose how to
exact revenge on him. Throughout the story she came up with many different ideas
of how to accomplish this, but in the end she decided to kill her two sons and
poison the woman Jason now loves. In killing her children Medea hopes to show
Jason how wrong he has been in leaving his wife for someone else. She wants to
cause Jason the same amount and kind of pain that he has caused her by going to
bed with another woman. Also by killing the children it is to protect them from
a life of poverty brought on by having no father to take care of them.
In this plan there is much reluctance
from Medea because of her maternal love for the children. She did manage to
overcome her maternal feelings and kill both of her sons. In overcoming the
hardships of this action she thinks about many aspects that will help her
overcome the difficulty she blames herself for getting into the situation, when
she destroyed her family to be with Jason. She tells herself that Jason didn’t
treat her well and appreciate her for the way that she has treated him, and
that the gods are concerned with keeping of promises. There were also several
key events that pushed Medea towards fulfilling the plan. The first instance is
when Creon comes to Medea’s home to banish her. Being told to leave the only
city that she feels somewhat safe hurts her. Creon thinks that because of her
public outcries to the chorus that she will plan some revenge. This suspected
action from him starts to set the plan into a concrete resolution. Creon
decided, after pleading from Medea, that she can stay one day to get her
affairs in order and figure out where she is going to go. A second event that further
hardened her plan was when Jason came to see her. He came saying that what he
did was for the best of the family and that Medea should be grateful because
the marriage to another woman furthers the whole family. He tells Medea that
she is being selfish for being so upset and trying to turn him into a bad
person. This makes her very angry at him because, even if it did further the
family, it broke the sense of security that marriage is supposed to provide. The
3rd point that finally would bring her plan to fruition was her
friend from another city coming to her town. After talking with him about what
happened she gained a place of refuge for herself, and her children, even
though they wouldn’t actually be going with her.
The audience
of this play would feel somewhat tied to what happened because of the way that
the chorus and the rest of the characters interacted with Medea. What happened
to Medea could have very well happened to many other women at the time of the
play, and even today. The ideas of moral injustice are very well suited to
immersing an audience in the play. People in the audience could have felt as if
one particular character or another could have very well been representing
them. In society there are people who have been hurt by a lover. There are
people who have left a lover. There are people who have been in the chorus’
position, and in the position of the woman who Jason was to marry.
A character
who I felt most tied to was Jason. Every man has had thoughts of leaving his
current lover for another. Feelings of attraction fade overtime, especially
when the initial start of the relationship was formed from an injustice. Karma
comes back to get people when they aren’t morally just. Medea lost her life
that she knew, but that life was formed on a bad action. Jason lost his new
love, but that new love was a result of leaving a wife and children.
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