Medea And Agamemnon

The female characters portrayed in Aeschylus and Sophocles’ works have considerably different personalities and roles, yet those females all have the common weaknesses of being short-sighted and stubborn. They intensify the conflicts within their families while being inconsiderate of the impacts that they may bring to their nations and societies, which leads to consequences that they are incapable of taking responsibilities for. Clytemnestra and Antigone, two major characters in their respective author’s works, possess different motivations for their deeds in the stories. While Clytemnestra is driven by the desire of revenge to murder her husband Agamemnon, Antigone acts against Creon’s will and strives to properly bury her brother. Despite having different motivations and personalities, Clytemnestra and Antigone both commit

From the beginning of the play the conflict between good and bad where Medea and Jason are concerned has been ambiguous. Both characters have done terrible things in order to attain what they want. Nothing could stand in the way of them including Medea’s father, whom Medea betrayed and to pile on the grieve she kills her brother and drops parts of him into the sea so as to delay her father thereby ensuring that Jason and his Argonauts could fulfil their quest to attain the Golden Fleece. When Jason betrays Medea and walks away from their marriage we immediately identify him as the villain, yet the reader fails to understand that during that time when this play was written it was still socially acceptable for the man to walk away from his marriage provided he gives back the dowry he attained from the wife’s father. In this case Medea did not bring any such items so it was even easier for him to leave her so as to empower himself. It was Medea’s role as a woman belonging to that age to accept Jason’s decision however she feels betrayed that he would break a vow made in front of the gods, and apparently she was not a regular woman even by the standards of that time as she had an intellect that could rival that of scholarly men. So to exact her revenge she destroys everything Jason loves leaving him to regret ever betraying the marriage.

Although, the women often appears in Greek mythology as dangerous and immoral. In the myths of the Greeks from the earliest poems of the archaic period to the sophisticated dramas of classical Athens, there appears a pervasive fear of women. Female characters of many Greek dramas child killer Medea, the husband killing Clytemnestra, and the mother killing Electra. While these females appeared previously in Greek myth, the Greek authors further explored their characters and displayed their malice in greater depth. As can be seen from myths and drama, this fear as it surfaced in ancient Athens is voicing of the male concern that women are a threat to their masculine society and have the potential to disrupt and destroy

Clytemnestra’s overwhelming hate for her husband deepens because Agamemnon shows no feelings of remorse and believes that Iphigenia’s sacrifice “[is] for the best” (216-224). Aeschylus recalls the final moments of Iphigenia’s sacrifice: “her pleading, her terrified cries of “Father”!/[…]/ Her eyes threw a last pitiful glace at her sacrificers,/ but like a figure in a painting,/she could not call to them for help” (228-242). Consequently, Iphigenia’s heartbreaking sacrifice motivates Clytemnestra’s “unforgiving child-avenging Rage” (155) upon her husband, Agamemnon. Clytemnestra’s maternal instinct implores her to take revenge against Agamemnon for his mistreatment of their daughter. Furthermore, Clytemnestra views Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia as a betrayal of their marital love. Clytemnestra believes her husband deserves the same fate as Iphigenia because Agamemnon “[has] sacrificed [their] own child, [Clytemnestra’s] labour of love, to charm away the cruel storm-winds of Thrace” (1417-1417). To Clytemnestra, Agamemnon must “suffer, deed for deed,/ for what he [has] [done] to [their] daughter,/Iphigenia, his own flesh and blood!”

In order to stop Jason from marrying Creon’s daughter, she kills her and Creon. Medea furthermore kills her children as a way to give Jason even more pain (and on some accounts, save her own children from the royal family’s vengeance). Through her murderous actions, Jason’s power is even greatly more diminished. At the end of

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

Rejection from her husband and banishment from the King leaves Medea at the bottom of the hierarchy. Her life spins out of control, and she believes the answer to be revenge. She gave Jason power by committing murder when she helped him escape. Now that he abused that gift, Medea is blinded by desperation. She expresses her rage by saying “Things have gone badly every way.

Jason was just tired of her. However, he got a great opportunity for love. He wouldn’t have to deal with Medea’s insults and temper. In addition, he could be the king and take care of his children without any troubles. Although Medea would be understandably hurt and angry, her response was so extreme it was nearly

In the Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus, the theme of bad mothering is evident in the way that Clytemnestra abandons and neglects her son, Orestes. In the first play, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra has been planning the murder of Agamemnon for two reasons: (1) for the sacrifice of her only daughter, Iphigenia, and because she is in love with another man named Aegisthus. In the mean time, she refuses to be a good mother to Orestes, her son. This form of neglect is based on a hatred for her husband, which has enraged her enough to kill Agamemnon in a bathtub. In this context, Clytemnestra is a neglectful mother that forgets that her son, Orestes, is becoming more aware of her treachery after the murder. In this manner, the theme of bad mothering is based on a massive form of motherly neglect for Orestes, which culminates in his desire to seek revenge for his father by killing his mother. These are important aspects of Clytemnestra’s selfishness, which has neglected to embrace the lover her son, Orestes. This form of bad mothering defines the monster within tht seeks control by the murder of her husband. In this way, Orestes grows up in a severely dysfunctional and non-nurturing environment due to the maternal neglect that he must experience in the home.

The Greek plays Antigone and Medea both feature a female protagonist who confronts dire circumstances, and, in order to escape them, must resort to an extreme course of action to save herself. In the case of Antigone, the cause of her troubles is a royal edict issued by her uncle, King Creon, which prohibits the people of Thebes from administering her fallen brother, Polyneices, a proper Greek burial: “whoso disobeys in any way, his doom is death by stoning before all of the people.”(pg.92) As such, Antigone’s crusade for justice revolves around her defiance of Creon’s authority, as she does go on to violate the edict, and the consequences that befall on Thebes because of this. Similarly, Medea’s conflict, though inspired primarily by the actions of her

In Medea, a play by Euripides, Jason has numerous qualities that prompt his destruction. After Medea aids Jason in his journey to get the Golden Fleece, slaughtering her brother and bringing disgrace to her dad and her land all the while, Jason discovers another lady regardless of swearing a vow of loyalty to Medea. Medea is crushed when she figures out that Jason left her for an another women after two kids and now needs to expatriate her. Medea plots vindicate on Jason after he provides for her one day to take off. Medea later acts exceptionally as a subservient lady to Jason who is negligent of the malice that will be unleashed and lets the kids stay in Corinth.

This is the defining part of the play on who Medea is; someone that creates her own fate and disprove expectations. Which is what led her to the conclusion of killing her own children, knowing that this will hurt Jason the most, even over being murdered. Because men primarily care about family lineage and Medea ended Jason’s family forever with this heinous act. All these events portray Medea as a fearsome sorceress that will not tolerate being taken advantage of. Her traits of power and strength come during the scene when she is about to kill her children and is indecisive; but in the end her anger towards Jason overpowered her love of the children and she murders them. In the last scene of the play when she is above Jason in a godly chariot pulled by snakes the audience gets a sense of her cleverness and how she is different from other female characters. She will not risk being captured and was always two steps ahead of Jason the whole time. This is far different than what is usually expected, because the hero is defeated by a woman and she leaves without any sort of punishment. Medea as described in this play is a powerful/revengeful sorceress that outwitted her husband and managed to escape punishment for filicide.

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

The different portrayals of female characters Antigone and Lysistrata illustrate the fundamental nature of the proper Athenian woman. Sophocles' Antigone allows the reader to see that outrage over social injustices does not give women the excuse to rebel against authority, while Aristophanes' Lysistrata reveals that challenging authority in the polis becomes acceptable only when it's faced with destruction through war. Sophocles and Aristophanes use different means to illustrate the same idea; the ideal Athenian woman's ultimate loyalty lies with her polis. This Greek concept of the proper woman seems so vital when considering Athenian society because both a tragedy and comedy revolve around this concept. The differing roles accorded to

Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Antigone by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides are all well-written plays highlighting the tragic tales of three women scorned. Exposing all their flaws along the way, Clytemnestra, Antigone, and Medea let their untamed emotions build their paths that shines some light on the true nature of their relationships with the people around them and society in general in the hopes that their heightened emotions will help fix all of their troubles. Some fail to realize that there are levels to revenge and each of these women were all seeking revenge, but they were not all on the same level of the revenge they were seeking. These levels of revenge pertaining to these specific situations can be put in two main categories of direct and indirect revenge. From these two categories we can weigh the intended damage to the collateral damage. Throughout these production, we see that all different aspects of artistic designs are