20090910-11 Medea (Group 5)


Summary

  For most of class today, it seemed we spent separating the “good” from the “bad”. We spent a lot of time analyzing Medea and how her actions resembled or disputed her being a “Hero”. We concluded that some of her actions were not hero like at all, for example the killing of her own children, the fact that she is a woman, and the fact that she had a very barbaric personality. While on the other hand, she demonstrated metis throughout the play and she seemed to be out for “justice” for the wrong she felt that Jason committed against her. In the first scene Medea appears to be a character who deserves our sympathy, but as the play progresses we gain a deeper insight into the motives of both Jason and Medea. Medea resents her children despite her love for them, and is willing to use them to hurt Jason. In the second conversation Medea exercises her skill of metis by poisoning gifts for the princess and using her children to get the poison to Jason's wife.  She asks Jason if the children can go with him, and avoid exile with her.  Jason agrees because he loves the children.  Medea condemns the children to death when she has them give the poisoned gifts to the princess. When the children return she kills them, claiming to do it out of love, and to save them from their enemies.  Jason returns a third time to save the children.  In this final conversation Medea confesses that she killed her children to make Jason feel pain.  We also discussed how this text is feminist:  Medea is clever and takes the initiative, as opposed to the stereotypical "worthless" woman with no agency, as Jason thought.

 

Passages:

"He pretends not to, but he will put up with it.

An, Aigeus, I beg and beseech you, by your beard

And by your knees I am making myself your suppliant,

Have pity on me, have pity on your poor friend,

And do not let me go into exile desolate,

But receive me in your land and at your very hearth.

So may your love, with God's help, lead to the bearing

Of children, and so may you yourself die happy.

You do not know what a chance you have come on here.

I will end your childlessness, and I will make you able

To beget children. The drugs I know can do this."

 

     In this passage, Medea reveals several things. She is talking to Aigeus, an old friend, who is not able to have children. This passage shows some of Medea's metis. It reveals her "chemist-like" craft/technical skills in the form of the drugs she makes for Aigeus, and it also shows her cunning in using this relationship with Aigeus to plan her escape.

  

Terms:

 

1) Tragedy:  A dramatic composition dealing with a serious theme, typically that of a great person destined to destruction

2) Catharsis:  the purging of emotions