Alternate Endings in Anouilh's Medea Essay

For Medea must fall in love with Jason and then she will use her great skill with magic to help Jason acquire the fleece. Because of Hera’s hatred towards Pelias Medea’s life is now destined for extreme agony, shame, and guilt. Her love for Jason causes her to tear away from her loving parents and dishonor her father by helping his enemy. Hera’s plan to avenge Pelias also flood Medea’s head with thoughts to keep her from straying from Hera’s plan. Unfortunately for Medea her decision to help Jason was not her own and was a careful thought out plan by Hera. Her life would never again be the same. Even though Jason promises to love her always and promises that she will be his wedded wife, he breaks this promise as soon as she become old and he is given the opportunity to marry royalty. Medea decisions were not in any way wise but if it were not for the arrows of Eros she would have had better judgment on the stranger. Medea’s behavior in this story shows that of loyalty and confusion in her heart. She is in agony because she can not conceive as to why she feels so much love for a stranger and does not wish to dishonor her father by doing so. But then she is constantly

In Medea, a play by Euripides, Jason possesses many traits that lead to his downfall. After Medea assists Jason in his quest to get the Golden Fleece, killing her brother and disgracing her father and her native land in the process, Jason finds a new bride despite swearing an oath of fidelity to Medea. Medea is devastated when she finds out that Jason left her for another woman after two children and now wants to banish her. Medea plots revenge on Jason after he gives her one day to leave. Medea later acts peculiarly as a subservient woman to Jason who is oblivious to the evil that will be unleashed and lets the children remain in Corinth. The children later deliver a poisoned gown to Jason’s new bride that also kills the King of Corinth.

Throughout the entirety of the play, Medea, there are multiple victims of other people’s actions as well as their own. This raises the question: out of all the people who suffer in this classic play, ultimately, who is the tragic figure? Although many people have to suffer slow, painful deaths in the play, the answer is narrowed down to the two main survivors: Medea and Jason. While Jason is the victim of his children getting murdered by Medea, the tragic figure still remains Medea due to how she is the one who suffers the most throughout the play because of Jason and societal expectations.

However, no one in the play except the Nurse thinks for a second that Medea could bring herself to murder her children. Medea even has an internal debate over whether she could bring herself to commit such a crime, showing once again that she is not completely in control of her emotions. In the end, she decides to go through with it rather than leave them “to the mockery of my enemies” (78). In the end, Medea appears in the sky in “a chariot drawn by dragons” (84). She has already killed the boys and she attributes their death to Jason’s “weakness” (86) and his “lustful heart and new marriage” (86). The play ends with Medea disappearing from view with the children.

Her act of revenge is supported by the Chorus who feel that “to punish Jason will be just.” Significantly, this notion of support encourages Medea to believe she is correct in punishing Jason and continues to believe her operation of revenge is justice. Each murder that emerges within Medea conveys the true nature of her behaviour. The theme of violence is continually repeated thus it depicts how consumed she is by revenge.

Once she learns that Jason has married another woman, Medea's personality turns completely around. The strong loving wife turns into a barbarian huntress in search of revenge. After plotting and changing the course of her revenge a few times, she perpetrates an attack that will certainly kill the new bride. Her method is focused on the woman, but it may or may not affect others around her target. Medea knows that the poisoned dress and head adornment will be lethal to Jason's bride, but she cannot possibly know what will come of Jason, their children, or the king. Her rage knows no bounds and she sends Antigone and Ismene on with the poisoned gifts. Weigel describes the revenge of Medea in his critique of the writing: "Jason becomes entangled with a force that crushes his dignity and detachment, that tears his successes to tatters. At the end he is in exactly the same position as Medea. Both are bereaved of mate, children, and friends. Both are free to grow old without comfort. And both are utterly empty inside, except that Jason is now filled with the same burning hatred that possessed Medea" (Weigel 1391).

Commonly considered one of Euripides greatest pieces, Medea is an insightful depiction of how a woman’s love for her husband, churns into a gruesome revenge scheme against him. This tragedy illustrates a tale of a woman who challenges Greek societal norms. In the era that the story takes place; women are often seen in submissive roles. However, the play’s main character, Medea, challenges their customs through her actions against the Kingdom of Corinth and Jason.

However at the end she responds to herself with, “The thing’s done now.” which affirms that the children’s fates are sealed. (1062) Her circumlocution shows that despite her efforts to consider an alternative, she still arrives at the same ending; killing her children. Her children will die because they delivered the gifts that killed Glauce, and Medea wanted Glauce killed because Jason betrayed her love, love which was induced by artificial means, therefore her final

Medea is the tragic story of a woman desperate for revenge upon her husband, after he betrayed her for another woman’s bed. It was written by Euripides, a Greek playwright, in 431 B.C. Throughout the play each character shows us their inconsistent and contradicting personalities, in particular, Jason and Medea. The play opens with the Nurse expressing her anxiety about Jason betraying and leaving Medea for another, wealthier, woman. Our initial reaction is to feel empathetic towards Medea, who has been abandoned so conveniently. But towards the end of the play, when Medea takes revenge on

In ‘Medea’, Euripides shows Medea in a new light, as a scorned woman that the audience sympathises with to a certain extent, but also views as a monster due to her act of killing her own children. The protagonist of a tragedy, known as the Tragic Hero is supposed to have certain characteristics which cause the audience to sympathise with them and get emotionally involved with the plot. The two main characters, Medea and Jason, each have certain qualities of the Tragic Hero, but neither has them all. This makes them more like the common man that is neither completely good nor evil, but is caught in the middle and forced to make difficult decisions.

Lars Von Trier's adaptation of Medea combines many elements from the original plot line, but also differs significantly. Von Trier uses not only visual images to compel his audience, but also incorporates a vast amount of sounds and noises to create dramatic effect. The film follows a lonely Medea without her chorus of companions that an original audience of the play would be used to. Rather than seeming foreign, Medea seems well adapted to her new home and is often seen utilizing the lands bodies of water accordingly. Although it is not outwardly declared, Medea's main mission is to seek revenge and abolish Jason's new life. Jason is pictured as handsome and strong, following stereotypical gender norms. His new bride also is in

Rebellion stems from oppression, while the potency it has to change norms varies from context. In Anouilh’s Antigone, the protagonist fights against a ruler to create change. The main idea evoked through the play is that rebellion is an ideology rather than a set of physical actions, and like all ideologies, naturally spreads through society. Antigone rebels for herself, but never completes her goal. Her rebellion affects others, like Haemon and Ismene, changing their perceptions and actions. Additionally, her struggle did not bury her brother, but rather unveiled the intricate workings of dynamic characters. Accordingly, Anouilh’s Antigone explores the causes, consequences, and value of rebellion in regard to character change.

Moreover, Euripides incorporates Medea into the relationship to convey the idea that females also possess power in an alliance, but the form of their authority is different compared to that of a male’s. Medea elucidates that even in arduous times, she assists Jason and supports their marriage. In a direct conversation with Jason, she tells him, “…after I’ve done all this to help you, you brute, you betray me…” (27). She explains that although she took care of Jason and supported him whenever he needed her help, he disabuses his power to overpower her and abandon her. Even after Jason abandons Medea, she thinks day and night of him. Medea demonstrates that the power females possess is not physical and totalitarian like the males, but rather is emotional and mental. She tries to keep the family together and in trying to do so, she does whatever Jason asks her to do. She is the important woman behind every successful man. Without her command, Jason would not be the person he is. Therefore, she can destroy Jason whenever she desires with her power. She can be a femme fatale and reduce Jason’s life to rubbles. Similarly, after Medea finds out that she is being cheated on, she quickly creates a malicious plan to obliterate Jason. She assassinates his new wife and his heirs. Although her love is “greater than

His peripeteia occurs when Medea curses the royal family of Corinth in a rage of passion, reversing his upward rise to power. To further Jason’s suffering, Medea poisons Glauce and Creon and kills Jason’s children. This incident leaves Jason with nothing: he has no power, no bloodline, and the citizens of Corinth, his would-be subjects, sympathize with Medea and hate Jason. Jason loses all traces to any sort of home or family, he suffers because there is no “greater grief than the loss of one’s native land.” Medea leaves Jason with a final blow to his happiness – the knowledge of his own death. “For thee, behold, death draweth on, / Evil and lonely, like thine heart:, the hands / Of thine old Argo, rotting where she stands, / Shall smite thine head in twain.” (77 – 78) With this revelation, Jason is left with nothing but hopelessness and misery.

To conclude, Medea’s actions can be seen an act of desperation from her side, as she realises that her functional life in Greece is practically over: she is a woman with no man, therefore no rights. Although through her barbaric background and natural cunningness, she forges a plan to escape this miserable prospect of her life, her actions, as terrible and inhumane as they are, empower her to free herself from her discriminating