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Pang Fai Yiu1
Pang Fai Yiu
Hum 110
Title
In the story Medea by Euripides, Medea was both wrong and wronged.She was wronged in the sense that Jason had turned his back against her and was on his way to marrying the
Corinthian prince, Glauce, so that he could fulfill his ambitions of acquiring greater fortune and better social status.As mentioned by the meenger in page 39-40 of the book “For
mortals there is no one who is happy.If wealth flow in upon one, one may be perhaps luckier than one’s neighbor, but still not happy”, we can infer that Jason was unsatisfied with life when he was with Medea and needed something greater.Moreover, the fact that Medea had sacrificed everything she had, left her own country where all her family and friends were, and even killed her own brother to be with Jason and “helped Jason in every way”(1)made us sympathize Medea more.Even the Gods might have agreed that Medea was wronged and it was justifiable that she had avenged Jason as the Gods did not interfere throughout the story and at the ending, provided her with a dragon chariot to escape to Athens.Since love is something which is similar to drug, the more one indulge oneself with it, the harder it is for one to quit;Medea was so deeply in love with Jason and was unable to withstand the reality that Jason was going to leave her for some other girl.She ended up suffering over Jason’s mistake by crying and grieving every day.Slowly, her devastation turned her into a vengeance seeking monster that would do anything just to make Jason regret abandoning her.However, Medea vicious murder against Creon, Glauce, and especially her own children had caused us to shift our sympathy towards Jason.Although Creon might have been partially guilty for tempting Jason with his throne and wealth, while Glauce with her beauty, it was still ultimately Jason who chose to abandon Medea.Whereas the children, they
were innocent and did not deserve death because of Jason’s mistake, but Medea, too blinded by hatred murdered them in order to make Jason feel sorrowful.In the course of revenging Jason, Medea was being an extremist, she could have simply taken the moderate approach by hurting Jason alone, either physically or emotionally, but Medea killed everyone that Jason was connected to, including her own children as she wanted Jason to feel as devastated as she once did.However, by killing her own children, Medea then became the ultimate loser and she did not even realize that.Despite her killing everyone who Jason was connected to, Jason did not love any of them.Creon and Glaucewere just a gateway forJason to acquire his wealth and this can be inferred from his perspective of women, “It would have been better far for men to have got their children in some other way, and women not to have existed.Then life would have been good.”(18)Whereas for the children we can infer that he did not truly loved
themand did not spare much of a thought for them since he neither stayed with them to look after them nor did he stand up against Creon when Creon wanted to exiled them.Furthermore, throughout the book, there was no interaction between Jason with any of the two
children.Although Jason had offered Medea money so she can take care of herself and the children when they were exiled, it was not because he sincerely cared for them;he was simply feeling guilty.Thus he offered them money to make himself feel better.Based on Medea irrational decision to kill her own children, we can clearly draw the
conclusion that she was responsible for her ultimate demise.Although there was a constant series of unfortunate events which might have influenced her action, the idea of killing one’s own children was immoral.In addition, from the fact that Medea had make use of her
children to deliver the poison to Glauce, and killed them at the end, we can infer that she did not value her children and they were more of a tool to her.If one was to read the text carefully, one would realized that the king of Athens, Aegeus, had already offered her
sanctuary in Athens, and she could have easily brought them along with her since she had a dragon chariot which her grandfather, Helius, had provided.Hence, all these facts would then makeMedea speech in page 40, in which she mentioned that she was killing the children for their own good as they would not “be slain[ed] by another hand le kindly to them”
irrelevant.From this, we can also infer that at the ending of the story when Medea carried her dead children with her in the dragon chariot and plan to burry in the Hera’s temple was not because she loved them, it was just another way of revenging Jason and making him suffer even more as he would not have the opportunity to see his own children for the last time before they were buried.Medea’s ultimate demise might have also been caused by her own hubris, in the sense that her pride to win the game of revenge between she and Jason had led her into committing these evil acts.Moreover, the exceive amount of pride she had in herself might had caused her to choose revenge over using other methods to win Jason back.Her arrogance, in which she believed that she was more capable of Jason as she mentioned “I killed, and so gave you the safety of light… and took away your fear” might have been one of the factor which caused Jason to leave her.Since they lived a male dominated society, Jason might not have been tolerable of Medea’s arrogant.
