Betrayal In Medea

Medea’s strength is portrayed as her madness as she takes control and decides the fate of her enemies. She is a strong character and Euripides allows Medea to have a voice by allowing the audience to witness her break from the norm of what a woman of her time is expected to do. After giving up her family and former life to be with her husband, Jason, he decides to marry a younger princess while still married to Medea. Medea realizes that women are left to face the most miserable situations and says, “We women are the most unfortunate creatures” (229). Jason feels that Medea is to be grateful for what he is doing by marrying into royalty as it will afford all of them a better life. The representation of Medea by Euripides is powerful, manipulative, and extremely smart, yet because she is a woman she has limited social power.

Superficially, Medea is a critique of relations between men and women, the struggle between Jason and Medea; then the struggle between Creon and Medea. However at the deeper level, Medea is a critique of the quality and state of the contemporary culture of Euripides (Arrowsmith 361). The unique symbolism is that

<br>Medea dwells in self-pity until contriving a scheme that will avenge her hurt. Wallowing in self contempt is generally a quality attributed to women by society. Medea is so unhappy with herself after her marriage with Jason ended that she wanted to die.

In Medea, by Euripides, the two main characters Jason and Media are forced to leave Lolkos and have taken refuge in Corinth. Jason has the possibility of establishing a position of standing in the community by marrying King Creon’s daughter. Medea is enraged by Jason’s betrayal of her and their two children and she vows to stop the marriage and exact revenge. In the play, Medea and Jason are set up as foils. Medea is completely dependent on the dominance of passion over reason. She is depicted as conniving, brilliant and powerful. In contrast, Jason is portrayed as a a character of little feeling; he is passionless, obtuse, witless, and weak.

A sorceress and a princess, Medea is an important character portrayed in two very popular Greek mythological stories. Using her magic to help Jason secure the Golden Fleece, Medea subsequently fell in love with him, causing her to flee her homeland and family. It is this plot movement that writes both Apollonius’ Argonautica as well as Euripides’ Medea. Argonautica was not based solely around her and Jason’s story, however it was a key part, displaying her as a maiden of indecisive thoughts and a treacherous love and devotion to Jason. Medea, however, revolves solely around the transformation of Medea’s character based on Jason’s actions to be with another woman. By examining text from both Argonautica and Euripides’ Medea, different characteristics and personality traits of Medea can be revealed, ranging from an innocent maiden to an evil superhuman.

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.

In Euripedes’ play Medea, he depicts Medea as a woman who is consumed with vengeance and hatred after being betrayed by her husband Jason. This betrayal sparks a series of “unholy, horrible” murders. Medea’s actions can be justified through justice and revenge. Medea was motivated by Jason’s actions to pursue her own actions against Jason. Medea wanted revenge toward her husband for leaving her after she fully dedicated herself to Jason - and she also wanted to seek justice for the pain that he caused her. However, Medea went too far by killing her two children who were innocent in this matter. Ultimately, Medea’s final deeds are justifiable and outweigh Jason’s betrayal of his family.

Euripides also carefully reveals the elements of Medea's past that demonstrate her readiness to violate solidarity of family ties in order to pursue her intractable will; Jason and Medea's original tryst, for example, required that she kill her own brother, thus choosing marriage ties over blood ties. Secondly, Medea's selfishness provides power to her fatal flaw. Medea's selfishness and lack of humanity is displayed through the act of killing her own two sons. Medea understands that the slaying of her children will make Jason miserable. During this time, the chorus recognizes her self-worship and states, “But can you have the heart to kill your flesh and blood” (Euripides, The Medea, 816)? Medea does not stop to think what pain she may cause to herself by murdering them. She is only concerned about her happiness that will be derived from Jason's grieving. Medea comes to the conclusion that it is worth the suffering just to see her ex-husband unhappy. Medea states, “Yes, for this is the best way to wound my husband” (Euripides, The Medea, 817). This exhibits Medea's selfishness by the slaying of her sons just to cause sorrow to Jason for her own pleasure. Medea's rage also leads to her fatal flaw of excessive passion. Her excessive passion, fed by rage, leads Medea to do uncalled-for acts of violence and murder.

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

Typically, throughout history a tragedy has been defined by containing a male hero who goes from happiness to misery. Medea is just one example of an Ancient Greek play which actively rejects this trope. Written in 431 BC by Euripides, Medea is based on the Greek myth of Jason and Medea wherein Medea is rejected by her husband and resorts to killing their children in an act of vengeance. It can be argued whether her actions were justified or whether she was acting out of passion as a ‘fickle’, emotional woman. Worthen argues that woman are seen as “creatures of passion” whereas men represent the “organizing principles of the Greek state: Reason, the law and legitimate society.” This argument is based on the idea that passion and emotion are

Euripides' Medea Medea is the tragic tale of a woman scorned. It was written in 431 B.C. by the Greek playwright, Euripides. Eruipides was the first Greek poet to suffer the fate of so many of the great modern writers: rejected by most of his contemporaries (he rarely won first prize and was the favorite target for the scurrilous humor of the comic poets), he was universally admired and revered by the Greeks of the centuries that followed his death('Norton Anthology';). Euripides showed his interest in psychology in his many understanding portraits of women ('World Book';). Euripides choice of women support characters such as the nurse and the chorus is imperative to the magnification of Medea's emotions.

For the women in ancient Greece, justice was far from reach. In the Greek society, men were allowed to abandon their wives in order to marry younger ones and Medea was not invulnerable to this fate. Despite all of her devoutness to her husband, he relinquished her for someone new. “Oh how unhappy I am, how wretched my sufferings. Oh woe is me. I wish I could die”, Medea cried out at the horrendous news (page 3, line 9). Euripides created a tragedy that many women during the ancient Greek time could relate to.

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.

The Chorus delivers these final lines of Euripides’s Medea, “…the end men look for cometh not, / And a path is there where no man thought; so hath it fallen here.” (Euripides, 80) This quotation not only signifies the events, which have transpired in the plot of Medea, it also shows the recognition of a very curious aspect of Medea: that the protagonist of the play, Medea, is not the tragic hero. A tragic hero by Aristotelian standards is one who possesses a driving aspect– or hamartia – which causes his or her downfall, who endures a reversal of fortunes leading to immense suffering – called peripeteia, and who undergoes an anagnorisis: a profound change or realization. Medea does not have any of these attributes. Instead, it is

As the famous Greek playwright Euripides once said: “Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.” Such ideas are portrayed in one of him most famous plays, Medea. This play is a fascinating classic centered on the Greek goddess Medea. Despite its recent fame, during his time, Euripides was unpopular since he used what would be considered a ‘modern’ view where he would focus on women, slaves and persons from the lower classes. In the play, Medea commits filicide, which initially appears extremely horrendous, but as the audience is guided through the play, they develop sympathy towards Medea. In order to achieve this empathy and enhance the understanding of Medea’s pride and ideals, Euripides