Blog Post #1: Medea

Blog Post #1: Medea

The play Medea discusses the fine line between right and wrong and whether revenge on a bad person in turn makes the punisher also evil. After saving his life, retrieving the Golden Fleece, killing her brother and abandoning her homeland, Medea is repaid by her husband, Jason, by his marrying another woman and exiling Medea and their two kids from Corinth. In a moment of blind rage, Medea constructs a plan to exact revenge on Jason by killing their children and his new bride, Glauce, so that he too may feel the pain that he has inflicted upon her. She sends her two boys to deliver a dress and a diadem to Glauce that will burn her flesh the moment it touches her skin. Through this act, Medea also murders Glauce’s father, King Creon. Soon after, she slaughters her own children in cold blood, supposedly to save them from a lifetime of ridicule, but actually to hurt Jason. The point of such tragic events is to demonstrate that while justice should be served, taking it upon herself to exact revenge simply makes Medea just as heartless and wicked as Jason, if not more so.

            This sentiment can be expressed in a passage (line 782 – 801).

Medea: So it must happen. What profit have I in life? / I have no land, no home, no refuge from my pain. / My mistake was made the time I left behind me / my father’s house, and trusted the words of a Greek, / who, with heaven’s help, will pay me the price for that. / For those children he had from me he will never / see alive again, nor will he on his new bride / beget another child, for she is to be forced / to die a most terrible death by these my poisons. / Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, / a stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite, / one who can hurt my enemies and help my friends; / for the lives of such persons are most remembered.

Chorus: Since you have shared the knowledge of your plan with us, / I both wish to help you and support the normal / ways of mankind, and tell you not to do this thing.

Medea: I can do no other thing. It is understandable / for you to speak thus. You have not suffered as I have.

Chorus: But can you have the heart to kill your flesh and blood?

Medea: Yes, for this is the best way to wound my husband.

            The key words in this passage that highlight this point that getting revenge on an evil person reflects an even greater evilness in the retaliator, are “price”, “normal”, and “wound.” The term “price” implies that Jason owes her something in return for his betrayal, and that she is entitled to compensation for her pain, which would be that Jason is pained just as much as she was. Someone who is good doesn’t look for reciprocity when giving others something, and because she expects something for her anguish, that sets her on a path to becoming evil. In response to Medea’s proclamation, the Chorus states that they want to help her and “support the normal ways of mankind.” They know that her plan is heartless and completely irrational. No mother would ever think to kill her own children. In this way, Medea is depicted to be inhuman due to her abnormal rationalization on how to get back at Jason. In the last line Medea outright says that she wants to “wound” her husband, which is interesting considering she has these elaborate plans to kill everyone around him. The whole point of her scheme is to hurt him. In her eyes, by killing Jason she’d be letting him off too easily. She wants him to suffer just as badly as she did while he watches his world come crumbling down.

            Although this passage starts off by appealing to Medea’s circumstance and outlining her hopeless situation, it quickly escalates into her desperate need for revenge, which overshadows her sorrow and depicts her as being the real evil in this play.