Medea Literary Analysis

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.

Medea and Jason are married and have children. Jason then abandoned Medea for Glauce. Medea then gets angry and decides to plan a quest for justice. Glauce is poisoned and the children are murdered. Medea leaves and Jason is left with all of his values lost.

He said that by marrying the princess he would be able to afford a great life, not only for himself, but also for Medea and their two children (16). Jason makes it clear that he does not feel tied down to Medea since she is an immigrant. According to the explanatory notes on page 169, “a marriage with a foreigner would have no legal validity.” To account for his actions, he tells Medea that he did his best to ask the King of Corinth, Creon, to allow Medea and the children to stay in Corinth. However, Jason states that Medea’s behavior was ill is why she was being driven out of Corinth. Jason’s intentions changed. He intended to provide for Medea and the children. Jason told Medea he would help her make safe passage to a friend’s house, and would give Medea money for her and the children. Jason at first appears to be reasonable; however, he then appears to be insensitive due to the remarks he says to Medea (15-16). As Jason begins telling Medea his intentions he starts off reasonable and justifiable, yet as he finishes he becomes insensitive and unreasonable. Jason is unaware of Medea’s secret, which is the consequence of his

In Medea, a woman betrays her homeland because of her love for a man. Jason is the husband that she ferociously loves and makes sacrifices for. They have two children together: Antigone and Ismeme. In Jason's quest for the golden fleece, Medea assists him in multiple ways. One of the things she does to help their cause is bring

The actual consequences of the characters decisions are far worse than either can imagine. In response to Jason’s deceitfulness, Medea concocts a horrific plan to kill his newly-wedded bride, father-in-law, and two children. When all is done, only a few survivors remain. Although Jason is among those spared, his misery is great. In grief, he reveals his short-sightedness, caused by an insatiable thirst for power, cost him immensely:

Jason’s rhetoric that we witness is based more on rational logic and reason which is consistent with the new culture of debate and argument in the new democracy, whereas Medea’s discourse raises more issues on tradition. Jason’s argument which he presents to explain his actions holds no emotional consideration or reality, “Also that I might bring my children up worthily, Of my position and by producing more of them…we would draw the families, Together and all be happy. You need no children.” Jason is suggesting that by leaving his family to marry Glauce it will not just benefit himself, but his family by bringing the two families together. However he dose not think of the effects this will have on Medea or his children as he completely dismisses

She inflates his ego by validating his reasoning behind his second marriage, pretending to have fallen on his side of things after thinking, rather than following her womanly heart. Furthermore, Medea states that it is her job as his wife to help him and his new bride. “I should have helped you in these plans of yours, have joined in the wedding, stood by the marriage bed, have taken pleasure in attendance on your bride” (Medea, 28). Additionally, she states that women, by nature, are foolish and “perhaps a little worthless” (Medea, 29), further validating Jason and his position as The Man. The true fool, however, is Jason, as he easily falls for her persuasive words. He compliments her for her newfound wisdom and cleverness before noticing that she is crying. While the reader is aware that she is planning to kill her children, her own flesh and blood, she informs Jason that “…a woman is a frail thing, prone to crying” (Medea, 30). She pushes him to accept her evil gifts, and to let her children deliver them to his bride to earn her favor— “They say the gods themselves are moved by gifts…” (Medea, 30)—who dies an agonizing death, along with her father.

The reader would come to this conclusion, because of the actions of Medea once she is infuriated by Jason’s behavior. Medea did not want to be reminded of Jason at all, she even hated her own

Jason’s great crime starts off the journey, and his polygamous actions leave Medea in a pool of sorrow and hatred while he is in a castle enjoying life with his new young princess. As Medea cries in her home, her nurse sits outside, saying, “But now there is hatred everywhere, love is diseased. For, deserting his own children and my mistress, Jason has taken his royal wife to bed, the daughter of the ruler of this land” (pg. 1). Jason had broken his promise of eternal love to Medea, and abandons her and their children. The tutor even suggests that Jason, “No longer has feeling for this house of ours” (pg. 3).

Medea and Jason flee to Corinth. After they have lived here for 10 years and have two sons, King Creon of Corinth offers Jason to marry with his daughter and he accepts it without hesitation. He divorces Medea and in exchange for it Medea takes her revenge. Medea sends a poisoned dress to King Creon’s daughter which burns her skin to death and that poisoned dress also kills her father while he is trying to rescue her. Addition to that she kills her children to strenghten her revenge against Jason and thus avenges her husband’s

Medea is left by her husband because of another woman and does not want to be made a fool; “The laughter of my enemies I will not endure” (727). Because Jason breaks his oath of marriage, Medea refuses to be humiliated and discarded in such a way, so she strategically contemplates a plan for revenge. Medea knows that it would be too easy to just kill Jason so she devises a plan to destroy everything he cares about. She inadvertently finds a way to poison his new wife, which in turn also poisons his father in law, the King of Creon. The ultimate demise of her plan is to take away the only bond left that connects Jason to Medea which is their children, so she goes to extreme measures “to deal Jason the deepest wound” (746). This results in murdering their children leaving Jason with nothing but great suffering. The action of killing her own children is the only real power that Medea has. She became lulled into believing that Jason loved her and ends up being victimized by his ego. This emerged jealousy and a vengeful rage to pursue after Jason and everything close to

He is in disbelief when he finds his two dead sons and mourns. To add insult to injury Medea did not get captured. She doesn’t face any repercussions for her actions. She actually is able to flee on the sun gods chariot and vanish. Leaving Jason to just wallow in sadness and despair.

Jason sees this as a sign of affection towards Medea and their children. He says that it is not for a lack of love that her leaves her, but for a lack of money and provision for their sons. “A man’s friends leave him stone-cold if he becomes poor,” (18) Jason says referring to what will happen if he does not marry the princess and inherit more money to share with his children. Medea takes this a great sign of disrespect and mourns the loss of Jason in her live before eagerly planning his demise. After this Medea proves time and time again that she does not have a clear image of their relationship, is mentally unstable, and suffers no for repercussions for her actions.

He stated that he was to do so to protect the people he loved. When the king first arrives to visit Medea and ask her to leave she explains to him that she not only grieves for Jason leaving her but also their children, she explains to him that they had two children together. Two children, which they both conceived, when she left her father’s home to follow her heart and marry the man that she loved. The king listens to all she has to say in order for him to not send her out of the country which is living in and tells him that she does hope that Jason makes his daughter as happy as she was with him, the king then took that offensively and asked her to leave the same day to be able to be in peace and know that he has protected his daughter as much as he was able to from this woman who was grieving. Another event that happened was that Jason then showed up to see Medea right after the king left and had asked her to leave. Jason went to complain about what she had done which helped her exile herself in from of the king as he asked her to leave. He planned to keep protecting his children while remarrying to king’s daughter he spoke of also becoming a king in the future while marrying into

If you saw something, would you say something? This is the questions posed by the Bullis players, in there production of Medea, which I had the honor of seeing as a critic for Cappies on October 28th 2017. Medea is a show about love, loss and most of all murder. It was originally writeen in 431 BC by Euripides in ancient Greece. The show was repopularized in in the late 1940s and started on broadway in 1947.