The Tragic Hero Of Euripides ' Greek Literature

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.

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.

In the Greek Tragedy Euripides: Medea, Medea is sad and angry towards her husband Jason for getting

For Medea must fall in love with Jason and then she will use her great skill with magic to help Jason acquire the fleece. Because of Hera’s hatred towards Pelias Medea’s life is now destined for extreme agony, shame, and guilt. Her love for Jason causes her to tear away from her loving parents and dishonor her father by helping his enemy. Hera’s plan to avenge Pelias also flood Medea’s head with thoughts to keep her from straying from Hera’s plan. Unfortunately for Medea her decision to help Jason was not her own and was a careful thought out plan by Hera. Her life would never again be the same. Even though Jason promises to love her always and promises that she will be his wedded wife, he breaks this promise as soon as she become old and he is given the opportunity to marry royalty. Medea decisions were not in any way wise but if it were not for the arrows of Eros she would have had better judgment on the stranger. Medea’s behavior in this story shows that of loyalty and confusion in her heart. She is in agony because she can not conceive as to why she feels so much love for a stranger and does not wish to dishonor her father by doing so. But then she is constantly

Jason’s apathy is a trait that enrages Medea. Jason thinks that he is always helping Medea for nothing in return when he tells her, “I can prove you have certainly got from me more than you gave.” (p.42). Jason could never have captured the Golden Fleece if it was not for Medea’s valuable assistance and he doesn’t give her credit for it. The only thing he gave Medea was an oath of fidelity, which meant nothing to him because he breaks it after two children. Jason just decides to leave Medea for a new bride and banish Medea after all that she has done for Jason such as killing her brother and disgracing her father. Those insensitive words from Jason deeply hurt Medea, who has sacrificed so much for

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

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

In pursuit of greater social status within the Greek community, Jason betrayed Medea “for a royal bed” by marrying Glauce. Medea has a hard time coping in society, as the role of women is very low compared to men. They are forced to become their husband’s possessions in marriage. Once Medea was betrayed, she was left with nothing and forced by Creon “to leave this land and become an exile” as Creon was afraid Medea would “do some irreparable harm to [his] daughter”. Her psychological state

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.

Aristotle cites that, "A man cannot become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall." Consistent to Aristotle’s characteristics of a tragic hero, the tragic hero must fit the requirements of being noble and employed in a high standing position of society. There should be a tragic flaw that ultimately leads to his downfall, and those reading the play must feel pity for this character as he goes through necessary changes as a result of his flaw. Aristotle illustrates a tragic hero as one who falls from grace into a state of acute misery. In Euripides’ Medea, the tragic hero is Jason, a man of noble birth who falls from being honored and respected due to a flaw in his character, that flaw being adultery. His adultery leads to terrible outcomes, the deaths of many people, and his loss of all the things he loved.His character is an excellent example of the heroes who rise high, then ultimately fail due to their own nature. By the end of the play he realizes his errors and becomes negligible. Some may argue that Medea is the tragic hero in the play, but this reasoning is flawed because Medea has no single flaw, she has exuded a sadistic nature from the start, from her actions involving the Golden Fleece to her killing her own offspring. Jason suffers from the fatal flaw of adultery that ultimately destines him for ruin, making it is clear that he serves as the tragic hero in Euripides '

Medea was a troubled soul once Jason left her for a younger princess. When the nurse says “Rulers are fierce in their temperament; somehow, they will not be governed;”, it rings very true of Medea (Puchner 531). Someone so accustomed to getting her way will by no means let anyone, including her beloved Jason, treat her with any disrespect. She not only felt dejected by Jason, but she felt she could do nothing to change her circumstance but take out deadly vengeance against those that committed such a hiatus act towards her. With all things considered, Medea felt Jason took everything from her when he left. Jason became her everything. When she

As is archetypal to all Greek tragedies, ‘Medea’ by Euripides chronicles the downfall of a noble hero, Jason, as a result of a combination of factors like fate, hubris and the will of the gods. In ‘Medea’, the hubris of the main character, Jason, was his pride. This drove him to betray his wife Medea’s trust and defy moral parameters set by the gods. Euripides employed the hubris of Jason and his act of disobedience towards the gods as a reflection of Athenian society of the time and used this as an attempt to correct the progressively immoral ways of society. This piece focuses on pride as Jason’s hubris and its contribution to his imminent downfall.

In the tragedy Medea, Jason is faced with realization of the death of his twin sons who were killed by their, mother, Medea; he falls into agony as he laments, inspiring a katharsis in the reader. Jason cheated on Medea, assuming that it was okay with her, saying, “…I/ Grew tired of your bed and felt the need for a new bride” (18). Jason desired a bride of title so that his current children and future children could be brought up “worthily” (26). He betrayed his family and Medea’s love for another woman, causing Medea began to seek revenge. She decides to do two acts: kill her husband’s fiancée and kill her own sons. “…I shall kill my own children. /My children, there is none who can give them safety,” Medea expresses, as she plots her plan (26). Jason is unaware of this act that his wife is ready to commit. No longer does he have a fiancée, but now he has lost his heirs to the kingdom. The tragic act occurring among family members, happens in Medea, which was highlighted in Poetics. The death of Medea and Jason’s sons leads to Jason’s

Tragic Greek dramas featured tragic heroes, mortals who suffered incredible 
losses as a result of an inescapable fate or bad decisions. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is a character, usually of high birth, which is pre-eminently great, meaning they are not perfect, and whose downfall is brought about
 by a tragic weakness or error in judgment. The three Greek heroes Oedipus, Medea and Agamemnon, who each killed a member of their family, carry most of the qualities that make up a tragic hero: being of noble birth, being surrounded by an extraordinary circumstance, and gaining self-awareness or some kind of knowledge through their downfall. There is an important need for the audience to identify with the Aristotelian hero through

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