Katharsis In Medea, King Lear, And All My Sons

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.

Most readers are aware of the many famous deaths or acts of death within the Shakespearean plays. And when the main characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, indeed, the readers would categorize the play as a tragedy. The problem with any tragedy definition is that most tragic plays do not define the tragedy conditions explained or outlined by Aristotle. According to Telford (1961), a tragedy is a literary

In addition to providing for his children, Jason also does complete the role of the protector. When Medea goes on her serial killing spree, Jason only knows that she has killed his new wife. Thus, Jason immediately thinks of his children and arrive as the palace “so [that he may] save the lives / Of [his] boys, in case the royal house should harm them / While taking vengeance for their mother’s wicked deed” (Euripides 391). He knows that the royal family of Corinth might see his sons and want to kill them because they are related to Medea; therefore, Jason wishes to whisk them away to safety before he loses them as well. However, he soon discovers Medea has also killed their sons, and he is absolutely stricken with grief. He mourns for “the boys whom [he] begot and brought up” and questions Medea on how she could have stomached such an unforgivable and sordid deed (Euripides 391). After many accusations from Medea, Jason then begs to see the sons’ dead bodies so that he may burry and mourn them, but Medea “prevents [him] from / Touching their bodies or giving them burial” (Euripides 393). Jason, left without a chance to mourn for the loss of his children, leaves Medea as she blames him for the deaths of their children.

In literature, a tragedy is defined as a drama where the main character in the end suffers extreme sorrow because of their mistakes or poor judgment. The characters that are fated to suffer the extreme sorrow, the tragedy, are (called) tragic characters. These tragic characters, however, must follow Aristotle’s principles which include:

Jason tries to reason with Medea by showing that his betrayal was for the sake of the children “so [that] [they’ll] be well off” (326) and be brought up “in a way that’s worthy/ Of [his] family” (325). Medea consumed in her grief is still unable to mediate with Jason’s betrayal and is determined to kill Jason’s new bride by sending her a poisoned dress and tiara. Understanding that displaying fury towards Jason will not accomplish her plans, she chooses to show that she “agrees with him about his marriage” (332). Confessing to her own stubbornness and “bad temper” (334), she is able deceitfully continue on to say she “realizes how wrong [she] [has] been” (335). Furthermore, she uses the children to cumulate sympathy, similar to how she initially gained Creon’s mercy. By “[admitting] [she] was wrong” (335) and telling Jason she “supports [his] [plans]” of their children “having royal brothers” (326), he becomes persuaded by Medea’s thoughtfulness. After Medea allows the children to “come out” (336) and embrace him, she asks whether his “new wife” (336) could ask Creon to “let [the] [children] stay” (336). Medea takes advantage of knowing it would be difficult for Creon to refuse a request from his own child to resume her agenda. After spotlighting how concerned she is about the children, she recognizes that Jason

Aristotle presents that there is a complex relationship between tragedy and emotions. For him, it is expressed through pity and fear. Konstan argues:

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.

Jason returns the favor by ditching her in order to marry a princess. Medea is upset with Jason considering he swore a marriage by oath, basically meaning that he violated an oath sworn by the head of the Gods. She treats her husband like a hero and in return gets treated like dirt. Medea decides to do something that will truly get back at Jason, killing their children. Although Medea’s actions are not completely justified, they can be made more sympathetic by looking at her emotions and envy her husband caused her after all she did

Tragic fates and the downfalls of others have always seemed to interest a crowd. Audiences will travel from afar and pay to witness such performances. They listen and sit at the edge of their seats wondering when and how the catastrophe will occur in the protagonist’s doomed life. The reason for this is because almost all of the spectators can relate to the protagonist due to the fact that the protagonists of these tragedies are tragic heroes. These tragic heroes have qualities that render them both tragic and heroic, and they display five key characteristics according to Aristotle’s definition. The criteria of a tragic hero is that they must suffer throughout the play, have a tragic flaw, eventually recognize their tragic flaw and take responsibility for their actions, be neither completely good nor completely bad, and arouse pity and fear in the audience. These traits allow the people in the audience to relate to the tragic hero because no one is completely good, no one is completely bad, many have felt suffering, fear having a tragic flaw of their own, and long to recognize their own tragic flaw and take responsibility for their actions. This reliability has helped tragedies, specifically Greek tragedies, become some of the most influential pieces in theatre and literature. In the play Oedipus the King, the protagonist Oedipus is an excellent example of a tragic hero.

Medea falls in love with Jason and throws away her life in her pursuit for him. Medea betrays her father, kills her brother, and abandons her country for Jason and his promise of marriage. After Medea throws away her life, Jason abandons her for another wife, and Jason blames all the wrong on Medea. Finally, in Medea’s quest for revenge, she kills her two children, finally abolishing all she holds dear in the world. To prevent her pain, Medea should choose a person to love who will not drag her down, a task other people should take caution to do as

Aristotle’s “The Poetics” describes the process of a tragedy. It is not the guide per se of writing a tragedy but is the idea’s Aristotle collected while studying tragedies. A tragedy, according to Aristotle, consists of six major points. The first and most important is the plot, which is what all the other points are based on. Such points are: character, language, thought, melody, and spectacle (Aristotle). A prime example of the usage of these parts in a tragic drama is evident in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”.

Aristotle, the great fourth-century Greek philosopher labeled this tragedy as “an imitation of an action of high importance, complete and of some amplitude: in language enhanced by distinct and varying beauties…by means of pity and fear effecting its purgation of these emotions” (qtd. in Kennedy & Gioia 885). Aristotle was portraying the epic Shakespearean drama, Othello. Aristotle prescribed three main elements for a disastrous theater recipe: First is a hamartia, or a tragic flaw in the main character that leads to the demise; second, catharsis or an emotional release of the audience’s sensations derived from the actors, so they seem to have felt they have learnt something about the play; and lastly, anagnorisis or the character’s astonishment of something that may have not before realized (Kennedy & Gioia 856-857). The protagonist in Shakespeare’s Othello satisfies all of Aristotle’s necessities for a tragic hero, as Othello is the character of magnificent status, which falls from that status of power to one of shame because of his hamartia. Furthermore the plot of Othello contains an influential katharsis through its peak and deduction, and an anagnorisis when Othello comprehends that Desdemona and Iago are not who they appear to

Throughout the play, Medea, Medea proves that knowledge can destroy. She is surrounded by powerful men, but uses her intelligence as her weapon to get what she wants: revenge on Jason, her husband. She shows that physical power may not be the ultimate power that one may have, but that intellectual power can destroy what one may hold close to them. In the play, Kreon, the king of Corinth, holds his children to a higher importance than his country; Jason, Medea’s husband, values his children and their status in society; and Aigeus, shows that having children would bring him great happiness. Medea is able to figure out what is most important to these three men to manipulate and cause revenge on Jason, who betrayed his vows to Medea. This eventually causes the murder of royalty as well as Jason and Medea’s sons. Little does Jason know that the revenge Medea takes on him is total, as his sons, which are his legacy, are dead. Also, no one would want to marry Jason because Medea’s on the loose, and can go after any woman that would pursue Jason. As Medea said, “For those children [Jason] had from me he will never see alive again, nor will he on his new bride beget another child, for she is to be forced to die a most terrible death by these my poisons. Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, a stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite, one who can hurt my enemies and help my friends” (Medea, 787-793). As one can see, Medea does not take the fact that Jason was

Before analysing Miller’s view of tragedy one must reconsider the traditional view, originally formulated by Aristotle and his critics, which Miller adapted and reinterpreted. Aristotelian tradition in the broadest terms defined tragedy as the imitation in prescribed dramatic form of a serious, complete human action, of great enough significance to be worthy of representation, which will strike the audience with pity and fear, two emotions far removed from sentimental tears. The hero of such a tragedy must be neither perfectly virtuous nor completely base but rather a man, great yet humanely fallible, who is preordained to suffer because of the fate of his inward character and a catastrophic series of events in the outward world. Also, he must never die ignorant of the circumstances of his fall, at somepoint, usually just before his death, he must undergo the painful process of discovery or revelation through which he will come to understand the reasons for and the significance of his role(and may make ‘tragic reconciliation” with life).

Aristotle defines a tragedy as a ‘representation of an action which is important, complete and limited in length. It is enacted not recited and by arousing pity and fear, it gives an outlet to emotions of this type.’