Medea fell in love with Jason the moment she met him. She killed and deceived her own brother and father for him, and used all of her resources to help him be successful and regain his kingdom. Medea acted so selflessly towards Jason because she was in love, or at least completely infatuated with him. However, Jason leaves the moment there is a seemingly better opportunity for him to marry the Corinth princess and elevate his status. This action demonstrates Jason’s true colors; he does not value his relationship with Medea and his two sons.
Electra fights with her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s lover, Aegisthus, because she feels betrayed by them as they killed her father. When Electra and Orestes are finally reunited, they plot against their fathers killers, and finally kill them. The play has several themes, such as vengeance and deception which are extenuated by the heightened realism style of the play. In Electra’s introductory speech, I would emphasises her agony of her father’s death, as this is the main reason the character is vengeful. To fit with the heightened realism of the play, I would exaggerate the mental pain that the character is going through by associating some lines with physical pain, such as ‘But my mother, and her bed mate Aegisthus, Split open his head with a murderous axe’.
Initially I didn’t think that she could kill her children but as I drew closer to the end I knew they were done for. I am led to this conclusion by the fact that Medea was versed in the black arts and had killed her brother years before, her blind rage towards Jason, and the grotesque manner in which she killed the princess and her father. After she does finally kill everyone her husband cares for she flies off into the sunset on a chariot and lives her life unhappily ever after. After reading the play I still didn’t fully understand Medea’s motivator for killing her children. Before she put her plot into motion she had skillfully manipulated Aegeus into granting her asylum.
Madea is the wife of Jason, who was abandoned by him and left with no one because she was exiled from her original land. Madea shows that being betrayed by Jason she needs to get back at him by killing his wife and her kids eventually becoming criminally insane. Lady Macbeth and Madea define themselves through their husbands because both commit or persuade acts of violence for personal gain eventually driving themselves insane. Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to become King of Scotland and she wants to become the Queen of Scotland. When she hears of the witches prophecy that Macbeth will become King she is power hungry.
In the book, after Medea talks about what she will do to the princess she tells the chorus “ I will kill the children—my children. No one on this earth can save them” (Euripides 35-36). When she says “no one on this earth can save them,” she lies., because she can obviously save them. She acts as if she has no other choice but to kill her children. Her mind is so set on revenge, which is clouding her judgment.
There are many opinions and much controversy on who the real tragic hero is in Antigone. Will it be Antigone the strong and determined girl fighting for her brother,or will it be Creon her proud uncle the king of Thebes. Antigone a tragic play written by sopocles (translated by ian johnston). Antigone tells us the story of a young girl named antigone who attemps to bury her deiced brother polynices. The one problem in doing this will be the fact that her uncle the king has created a law stating if any one was to bury polyneses they will be stoned to death.
Both women find love, commit to love, lose love and suffer from heartache. Each character’s reaction to these scenarios are far from alike. Medea, Princes of Colchis and practicing sorceress, falls in love with Jason of Lolcus. On the hopes that Jason will whisk her away from Colchis, marry her and start a family, Medea uses her powers to acquire the Golden Fleece for Jason and clear their path for escape. She is so intent on fulfilling her desires that Medea kills her own brother and manipulates the death of a king during their flight from Colchis.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Euripedes’ Medea embodies this quote from William Cosgrove’s play. Medea is a play that symbolizes feminism and the overturned of fate from a woman grieving in sorrow over the loss of her husband to another wife, to a man grieving in sorrow over the loss of his bride and children to Medea. The one thing about Euripedes’ play is there was a lot of word play to describe the situations and actions of one person, almost never giving a suspense of what is to come next. We knew ahead of time that Medea was bound to murder her children, which I thought should build a nice suspense to the play had it not been mentioned.
The final line “Who could not say, ‘Tis pity she’s a whore?” can be seen as directed towards her and so she is blamed for everything that has occurred. Throughout the play she is seen as quite powerful and headstrong by refusing many marriage proposals and being quite stubborn in doing so. However, she is reduced to a weak being however upon dying which is a culmination of her passions. It is perceived that women are a danger to men and to society as a whole and so Giovanni’s actions are to be blamed not on himself, but on Annabella because of the beauty she possesses. Giovanni states that Annabella’s “lips would tempt a saint” thus showing the corruption her presence inflicts upon even the supposed innocent of men.
Although in the play Medea, Medea is pictured as no ordinary women of the Greek times. She always ventured against men and society's tyranny. Medea betrayed and hurt her family and killed her brother just for the love of Jason. In addition she helped him secure the Golden Fleece, something that belonged to her family just for her love. The following actions show that she is strong, determined, and fearless as no everyday women were of that time.