The Greek tragedies Medea by Euripides and Agamemnon share similar character traits displayed through Medea and Clytemnestra which ultimately lead to their own downfall. Clytemnestra slaughtered her own husband and his foreign concubine seeing vengeance towards her husband Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter. Medea poisoned King Creon, a princess, and murdered her own children to seek justifiable revenge against Jason; her husband. Both women are seen to resemble strength and power. The two women portray a behavior unlike any other woman of their time period which ultimately leads to their downfall. The two plays both exemplify similar characteristics such as the role of women, passion/power, and vengeance.
It is known that the role
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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 …show more content…
She is seen acting out on justifiable revenge against her husband, Agamemnon. As seen in Medea, the drive to accomplish a task once the goal is set, Clytemnestra possesses the same qualities here “…my mind never sleeps, and with the help of the gods I will set things right” (912-913). After Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia; it was only right for Clytemnestra to seek justice for the heinous act. “By the child’s Rights I brought to birth…I sacrifice this man” (1459-1461). For the sake of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra it is only right to serve justice upon her daughters’ behalf and feels she treated her husband the same way he did his deities. Clytemnestra is a very deceptive character. She despises being regarded or treated as a woman, yet is able to make advancements using her femininity. She is known as the woman “[that] maneuvers like a man (13). Men were known to fear women who embodied masculine tendencies. The traits were regarded as unnatural during the ancient times. Clytemnestra was enraged about the fact she did not have the same regard as men. This put her on the edge to deny her femininity and overcome the men that surround her in order to gain masculine powers. Medea, on the other hand accepted that she was indeed a woman, but crossed the line of her feminine limitations set by ancient Greek times. She did this to prove she possessed more
Jason tries to reason with Medea by showing that his betrayal was for the sake of the children “so [that] [they’ll] be well off” (326) and be brought up “in a way that’s worthy/ Of [his] family” (325). Medea consumed in her grief is still unable to mediate with Jason’s betrayal and is determined to kill Jason’s new bride by sending her a poisoned dress and tiara. Understanding that displaying fury towards Jason will not accomplish her plans, she chooses to show that she “agrees with him about his marriage” (332). Confessing to her own stubbornness and “bad temper” (334), she is able deceitfully continue on to say she “realizes how wrong [she] [has] been” (335). Furthermore, she uses the children to cumulate sympathy, similar to how she initially gained Creon’s mercy. By “[admitting] [she] was wrong” (335) and telling Jason she “supports [his] [plans]” of their children “having royal brothers” (326), he becomes persuaded by Medea’s thoughtfulness. After Medea allows the children to “come out” (336) and embrace him, she asks whether his “new wife” (336) could ask Creon to “let [the] [children] stay” (336). Medea takes advantage of knowing it would be difficult for Creon to refuse a request from his own child to resume her agenda. After spotlighting how concerned she is about the children, she recognizes that Jason
Euripides’s play Medea and Sophocles’ play Antigone both describe a woman who faces many hardships throughout the play. The arguments between the characters in both of the plays justify their actions regarding what they did in response to what happens. In the play Antigone, the main character faces hardships because she broke the king’s law regarding the burial of her brother Polyneices, which eventually led to multiple deaths of because Antigone’s. On the other hand, in the Play Medea, the character Medea was a powerful sorceress who was tricked into loving Jason with the help of Aphrodite, and used her just to get power.
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 accomplished that by giving birth to two children for Jason. As the play slowly unraveled, it plainly displayed that she was faithful towards her husband, but being an ideal Greek wife was not her factual nature. She was independent and her qualities made her different from the Corinth women. In the opening sequence, the nurse introduced Medea as a frightening woman when someone wronged her. “Her temperaments are dangerous and will not tolerate bad treatment. For she is fearsome. No one who joins in conflict with her will celebrate an easy victory”, the nurse presented (page 2, line). From this, the reader can envision how ordinary other Greek women were. How they didn’t have a mind of their own and were defenseless towards those shabby treatments from men. These women were submissive and didn’t have any control over their lives. However, the protagonist Medea did. She took matters in her own hands when her husband betrayed her.
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
Soon after this, Medea is able to manipulate Creon as well. When Creon banishes her, she tells him of her great concern for her children and eventually convinces him to allow her to stay in Corinth for one more day. This allows Medea to continue with her plan to take out revenge on Jason. Medea acts and speaks like a Homeric Greek warrior, but tricks Jason by acting submissively like the ideal Greek woman Jason wished her to be. Medea approaches Jason with gifts for his new wife, apologizes, and tells him that she realized he was right. This move allowed Medea to remove all skepticism from Jason's mind, and he willingly took the poisoned dress to his bride. In the course of a few hours, Medea's ultimate manipulation skills enable her to exploit four individuals who are crucial to her murder plot.
In Greek tragedies the heroes mostly share a common similarity. This is no different when we look at Clytemnestra and Medea in their own individual situations. In Euripides play, Medea and that of Clytemnestra from the play from Aeschylus both have similar individual situations such as both of them are vengeful wives. (Euripides. (n.d))
Antigone by Sophocles and Medea by Euripides are two plays whose main characters are their namesakes. Antigone is a play based on Antigone’s response to the death of her brothers and Medea is a play based on Medea’s response to her husband Jason leaving her to marry the daughter of a king. Both Antigone and Medea are women fighting against oppression by directly disobeying the law. However, they use different tactics in their battles, and they have different reasons for fighting. In the end, both make their point by bringing down the royal households. These women effectively fight oppression in their own ways.
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.
Moreover, Euripides incorporates Medea into the relationship to convey the idea that females also possess a dominant role in the struggle over dominance, but their power form is different compared to males. Medea elucidates that even in the arduous times, she assisted Jason and supported their union. In a direct conversation with Jason, she tells him, “…after I’ve done all this to help you, you brute, you betray me…” (27). She explains that although she took care of Jason and supported him whenever he needed her help, he used his massive quantity of power to overpower her and abandon her. Even after Jason abandons Medea, she thinks day and night of him. Medea demonstrates that the power females possess is not physical and totalitarian like the males, but is emotional and mental. She tries to keep the family together and in trying to do so, she does whatever Jason asks her to do. She is the important woman behind every successful man. Without her command, Jason would not be the person he is. Therefore, she can destroy Jason whenever he desires with her power. She can be a femme fatale and reduce Jason’s life into rubble. Similarly, after Medea finds out she was being cheated on, she quickly creates and evil plan and destroys Jason. She murders his new
The story of Medea is about a woman named Medea who has just lost her husband, Jason, who went to go remarry with the king’s daughter. Medea gets furious and the king, Creon, banishes her from Corinth. Medea asks the king to give her one more day then she will leave. The king agrees. It is that day that she will plan on killing Jason, the king’s daughter, and the king himself. When she does this she will also get revenge by killing both her sins because they are the fruit of Jason and she will do anything to get revenge. That same day King Aegeus, king of Athens, arrives to Corinth and tells Medea that he will take her to Athens because she has medications for the Aegeus’ sterility. Now that she has somewhere to go she begins giving gifts to JAson and his bride which are a coronet and a dress which contain poison. After Jason’s wife dies her father , Creon, dies with her and Jason is left. Then Medea kills her two children and Jason is mad that he starts cursing Medea and she curses him back for remarrying. In the end Jason is devastated. In the end Jason wants to keep the bodies and bury them but Medea doesn’t agree and she
Unfortunately, Medea was not the type of woman to turn the other cheek and leave vengeances to her God. Medea not only took faith in her hands, she mindfully concocted a plan that consist of poisoning Jason new wife, but also destroying their kids in
. Likewise, Aeschylus also illustrates Clytaemestra achieving the role of a mother in Agamemnon. To explain, Clytaemestra serves justice for the death of her daughter Iphigenia, by killing her husband Agamemnon, the man who is responsible for her daughter’s death (Aeschylus, 55). Here, she says “Now hear you this, the right behind my sacrament: By my child’s Justice driven to fulfillment, by her Wrath and Fury, to whom I sacrificed this man,”
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
The death of Agamemnon within the play was an act of vengeance executed by Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra sought revenge by killing her husband, Agamemnon due to the sacrificing of their daughter, Iphigenia in which was executed by Agamemnon. In vengeance, Clytemnestra additionally murdered the Trojan princess and Agamemnon’s concubine, Cassandra. After the death of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra states, “so let his speech in deaths house be not loud, with the sword he struck, with the sword he paid for his own act” (Aeschylus 73). These acts of vengeance were certainly Clytemnestra’s motives of achieving private justice. It is evident that Clytemnestra believes that Agamemnon deserved to be punished for his acts. Clytemnestra withheld private anger against her husband for sacrificing their daughter in which sparked her retaliation and attacks against him. She believes her acts of revenge were seen as punishment or retribution for Agamemnon but, it is actually revenge. She also withheld private anger against Cassandra in which sparked her revenge as well. Such acts do not justify her actions because