How Effectively Does Euripides Convey the Horror of the Messenger Speech?

507 Words3 Pages
How effectively does Euripides convey the horror of the Messenger Speech? Euripides conveys the horror of horror of the messenger’s speech in many different ways. He starts by making Medea’s children sounding innocent, young and helpless. He describes them as ‘little boys’ and he says how they entered the palace ‘hand in hand’ which gives the reader the impression that they are young and venerable. This helps to convey the horror of what Medea has done because her plan was evil enough, but when she gets her young naive children to unknowingly kill two people, it just makes what Medea has done even more unthinkable. Euripides goes on to convey the horror of what Medea has done in the messengers speech by how he describes how people ‘felt sorry’ for the way she was treated. When the boys arrived, the messenger was ‘so pleased’ and so followed them up to the princess’ room. This conveys horror, because people who care about the princess, clearly has respect for Medea, and they believed she was being sincere. The ways she tricks innocent, well intentioned people into helping her with her murderous plot just increases the horror of the messenger’s speech. Euripides continues to convey the horror of Medeas play when the messenger describes Glauce’s happiness at the dress. She put it on and stared at it in the mirror ‘smiling’. She then started to ‘to and fro daintily about the room’. She was clearly doing this because she was very pleased with her new dress. This conveys the horror of what Medea has done, because the item that will kill Glauce is an item that has brought her joy and happiness. Euripides continues to write the messenger describing her death in vivid detail. He describes how he and Medeas attendants were frightened at her sudden illness. He describes how she ‘changed colour’, staggered and ‘shook in every limb’. He makes the seriousness of it even
Open Document