The Britches And Hose Theater Company Of Euripides '

Gabby Nunez The Use of Imagery and Figurative Language to Communicate Themes in Euripides’ Medea In the play, Medea by Euripides, there are many examples of imagery and figurative language to communicate themes such as: revenge, love, pride and culture. Medea falls in love with Jason, a man from Greece, she gives up everything and leaves her country to be with the one she loves. Shortly after Jason and Medea arrive to Corinth, Jason leaves Medea and marries the king’s daughter. Filled with anger and hurt, Medea plans to get revenge on those who have hurt her.

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.

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

Revenge is the predominant motivator for the psychological and corporeal action of the play. In the play, Medea is self absorbed into her misery, her determination of inflicting pain and suffering to Jason consumes her entire rationality and revenge is her only focus point in the play. She effectively draws the Chorus in, “to work revenge on Jason for his wrongs to

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.

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

Throughout the play we see a rising culmination of emotions of anger and hate to the point where there is an anticlimactic resolution when Medea gets revenge on Jason. If Aristotle were to comment on this so-called tragedy that Euripedes wrote, he would mention that this play does not contain the complexity and quality that a tragedy most definitely needs. According to Aristotle, the most important part of a tragedy is its plot or as Aristotle puts it, “the imitation of an action” or mimesis. Aristotle also states that in making a tragedy, three things must lead one after the other in a successive way; reversal of intention (peripetiea), recognition (anagnorisis) and the cleansing of pity and fear (catharsis). Euripedes fails to make Medea a tragedy as he does not include these main elements such as hermatia, peripeteia, anagnorisis and catharsis that Aristotle says make a tragedy successful. Euripedes ultimately fails to make a very complex play.

However this scene could have been the final chance for Jason to win Medea over, to cancel the marriage and so they can go and live together elsewhere with their children and have happy lives, and he is dead set on the marriage. A scene that could be contributing more to the development to the play is the scene where she meets the King of Athens. In this scene she manipulates him into feeling sorry for her for example by showing how much he has hurt her mentally, and how her future is uncertain. He then makes an oath to the Gods to allow Medea refuge in the city of Athens, and that he shall not give her over to anyone who would ask for her. This is a massive success for Medea, as it means that when she performs her murders she now has a safe place to go where she can stay without fear of any repercussions, as otherwise she was quite willing to die in the attempt of assassination, when they caught her.

Charlotte Bronte once said, “Women are supposed to be very calm generally, but women feel just as men feel. They need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do. They suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags”. In the play Medea, Euripides diverged from the traditional role of Greek women through Medea’s characteristics and response to her plight. In delineating the role of women, Medea was unlike any other Greek character. Medea was portrayed

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

The story illustrates how Medea sacrifices her own family, authority, and country to prioritize and defend Jason. The nurse describes how “[Medea] betray her dear father, own land and home and left to come for [Jason]” (Euripides 18). Medea breaks her own fidelity to his own family and country to prove her loyalty to Jason. She fails to use logic to recognize the worth of her own family and land, as well as, Jason’s deceitful acts and selfish intentions. No one left to guide and support Medea which become an opportunity for Jason to abuse Medea faithfulness.

Amongst Euripides' most famous plays, Medea went against the audience's expectations at his time. Indeed, the main character of the play is Medea, a strong independent female who neglected moral and . She was therefore in all ways different to how women were perceived in Ancient Greece. This essay will explore how Euripides' controversial characters demonstrate that his views were ahead of his time.