Select one passage from Medea you feel represents the central conflict of her moral choices. Make sure you reproduce it here and write 250 words reflecting on it. Why is it representative of her arc? What is it about the passage formally (diction, tropes, etc.) that makes it so incisive?
Boys, go into the house.
Now, only the sacred and pure are allowed
to witness this sacrifice. My hand has strengthened.
Yet, my angry heart resists these urges.
Release the children. Spare them from my
wretchedness.
In Athens they will bring me happiness.
But it’s too late. By all of Hell’s vengeful
demons I’ll not leave my sons
for my enemies to ridicule.
The children
must die. I gave them life and now
I’ll take it. No more wavering. It’s settled.
There, I see the princess wearing the crown
and know the poisonous robe eats her flesh.
The path before me is filled with grief
but it’s nothing like the dark road I’ll send
my sons down.
Let me say goodbye to them.
Children, give me your hands to kiss.
Sweet hands, sweet lips. Strong bodies
and noble faces. May happiness follow you
into that other place. Here your father
has stolen your happiness.
Such tenderness,
my hand caressing your skin, your sweet breath—
My sons.
Leave me, go into the house.
I can bear no longer to look at you.
The horror of my evil overwhelms me.
Horror of what I’ll do. Angry passions
have mastered me—emotions of misrule
that destroy men
(Euripides 1029-1056).
In Medea, Euripides explores the effects of revenge by embodying it in Medea. Revenge takes on the role of being more than an emotion—it is an engrossing and transcendent force. At the start of the play the nurse explains how devoted Medea was as a wife and mother. Jason’s betrayal (considering all that Medea had lost to be with him) forces a revelation upon Medea. The need to satisfy her sense of revenge trumps her moral duties as a mother and she surrenders herself to the state of vengeance.
Medea transforms into a vessel for revenge when she allows it to completely consume the way she dictates herself. Her choice to seek revenge against Jason is not without doubt as she heavily weighs the decision and necessitation of killing her children. Taking the life of her children is justified with the fact that she birthed them, it would be an act of briefly taking back what she lost when Jason betrayed her—ownership. Medea’s departure from Colchis when she decided to marry Jason would leave her with nothing (in status) except for what her husband could provide. When she kills her children she relinquishes her agency and body to revenge. She transcended from being human into being a revenge incarnate. Medea becomes endowed with the right to not only give life, but to also take it away.
Though, before her surrender, Medea appears to be pleading to the vengeful force that has overtaken her, begging it to leave her children untouched. While her hesitation may have been short, it is the only instance of doubt that she has. Her children are the only unblemished things in her life and serve as her moral anchor, even only for a moment. Though, her hesitation is not to be mistaken for a moment of weakness, it was merely a moment that called back to who she used to be. Her fate was never going to change. Before their sacrifice, the children are described with words like “sweet,” “tenderness,” and “noble,” juxtaposing their moral purity against Medea’s and Jason’s. In killing them she permanently untethered herself from her past and her humanity, her punishment to Jason is cosmic in this sense. Medea had reconciled with the fact that it was useless to fight against the “[a]ngry passions [that] have mastered [her]—emotions of misrule that destroy men” (1054-56); the purpose of her revenge extends beyond her.
Works Cited
Euripides, et al. Medea. Oxford University Press, 2006.
