Activity: Medea 2

One of the key ways in which Medea differs from Oedipus is that Medea has some degree of agency, or the ability to choose and act for herself. The central events of Oedipus all take place before the play actually starts, so in a sense the hero’s hands are tied; all he can do is deal with the consequences of these earlier events. Medea, however, does make some important choices. In order to highlight where exactly Medea’s agency lies, work together with your group to create a flow chart of Medea’s important decisions and their consequences, as well as potential consequences of other decisions she might have made. For instance, if Medea had chosen to go into exile without killing Jason’s new wife or her children, what would the consequences of that decision have been? Try to fill your flow chart with as many events and consequences as you can, then work together to answer the following questions on your Google Doc:

1. Implicit in the adjective “clever” that is repeatedly applied to Medea is the idea that she has a kind of foresight; an analogy might be a skilled chess player who can see the consequences of his or her actions many moves ahead. Do the choices Medea actually made in the play make the most sense give the other possible outcomes? If not, where might she have made a better decision?

2. At the end of class on Tuesday many of you noted that Medea’s acts of murder and infanticide were morally reprehensible and make you strongly dislike her character. Does analyzing the other possible courses of action make you feel differently about any of her actions? If so, how? 

3. Re-read the section of Aristotle’s Poetics on page 94 (2/3 down the page on the right-hand column) in which he examines the relationship between knowledge and action in the tragic hero. Now, think about the similarities between Medea’s and Oedipus’s actions. In your opinion, is one more or less reprehensible than the other? Is one more or less tragic than the other? Why?

4. Examine Medea’s speech from lines 995-1042. Here she seems to waver a bit in her plan and considers abandoning it entirely. What ultimately causes her to go through with it? How does this impact your reaction to her character?