Tragic heroes characterize tragedies because they tell the tragic story of those heroes and their tragic flaws. In the book Antigone written by Sophocles, we are met with many characters of the book, and the tragic hero is depicted into two characters, Antigone and Creon. We see the tragic death of Antigone as she took her life in the end of the book, and Creon the king of Thebes, who also faces his tragedy in the book. To begin with, Antigone tells the story that depicts the tragedy of Antigone, who also seems to be the tragic hero.
In Euripides’ text The Medea, Medea can easily be painted as the villian. She is a woman who killed her own children in an attempt to spite her husband. But, by examining the text, we can see that she deserves some sympathy. She has little to no control over her own life and has to rely on the will of men. And as a foreigner in Corinth abandoned by her husband, she faces even more challenges than the native women of Corinth did.
Thus, it was essentially Aphrodite who orchestrated their marriage by making Medea fall in love with him and subsequently, credit would be due to the goddess. To the audience this remark seems extreme, to claim that the love Medea has acted to strongly on and used to rationalize her extreme behavior is not grounded in sincerity, but in fact a result of the intervention of the gods. However, this does an effective job at causing the audience to question Medea and she hence begins to be seen no longer as just the tragic heroine without fault. It discredits the basis for Medea’s arguments in claiming her love as so great as to go through such extreme measures.
Medea and the women of Corinth both share, to a different extent, the experience of being unfairly categorized as the caretaker of the family, which aids Medea in persuasion because she can be trusted as a woman to speak on the patriarchal society. She continues as ‘’of all creatures that have life and reason we women are the sorriest lot’’ (229-230) of all the living things Medea describes women as the ‘’sorriest’’ which suggests that women are pitied and helps Medea to allure the Chorus to be on her side. Medea suggests to the Chorus that Females ‘’must at a great expenditure of money buy a husband and even take on a master over our body: this evil is more galling than the first. ’’(231-233) Medea is arguing that women must sacrifice a ‘’great’’ amount of money to ‘’buy’’ their partners. This conveys the patriarchal community in Corinth.
“The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance” (Samuel Butler). In the play Antigone, written by Sophocles, Creon is the tragic hero due to his dramatic actions. By the end of the play, Creon’s error in judgement causes his downfall. His ignorance begins to fade away as he recognizes his mistakes, but is too late.
Medea’s dilemma reminded me of a book I read my senior year, Beloved, which is based on a true story of an escaped slave who, upon learning she was discovered, decides to take it upon herself to kill her children in order to save them from the tortures of slavery. Although Medea had additional motives, I believe that her motives are similar. A mother would never want to see her children suffer, and Medea’s options were limited. Either her children would be brutally tortured and murdered for a crime that was not their own, or they would be forced into a life of exile where nobody would ever accept them.
MEDEA: THE ABANDONED “…You must know the stress and fear I have being unable to offer even water to my children” (Eripides, 2015, p.27) To be able to analyze Medea’s motives in the play, one must understand the biological and psychological reasons leading to altruistic infanticide. According to Sara G. West, a Doctor from the Department of Psychiatry in Ohio, Altruistic filicide is defined as the crime where parents kill their children because either the world is too cruel for them or because they are suffering from an incurable disease (West, 2015, Para.10). It is not easy to analyze altruistic infanticide due to its antithetical nature. It is antithetical because murder is considered a horrible act born out of hatred yet the reason behind
(Euripides et al., 2005, p. 16-18). Medea even spends time praying, and remorsing the wrong doings she has committed against her own family. Manic
betrayed his children and his wife, married the Princess, King Creon’s daughter, Glauce and now sleeps in a royal bed. Meanwhile, my mistress, Medea, the Fates fully against her and feeling totally dejected, screams and cries out at him, asking him to remember his promises to her. Asks him to remember the mighty oaths he had sworn for her. She calls upon the Gods to bear witness to the awful way Jason rewards her for her obedience and for her compromises and for all the accommodating she did for him and for all the love she lavished upon him.
In the play Medea, Euridepes uses many theatrical devices such as foreshadowing, imagery, the chorus and Medea ' 's dual roles of masculine and feminine within her to enhance the play and reveal Medea ' 's character. Many examples of the following can be seen throughout the book. The use of the literary technique of foreshadowing, is introduced to us in the play right from the beginning. The following technique enables us the readers to know the events that may possibly occur in the future and gives us subtle hints.
This is why Medea, according to the Greek gods, was in her right to take such severe consequences upon Jason and in this essay we will analyze Medea’s position and decide upon a conclusion whether her actions are justifiable or
The most direct reference to Medea comes when the Teacher says “You are an injured, loving woman. You demand absolute justice. You
Her pursuit of revenge and will of making 'corpses of three of her enemies' flips the whole scenario as well as her characteristics. By this time she becomes a distinct character and no longer remains a typical woman. This clearly shows the hidden strength of a woman which was suppressed by men. Medea seems to oppose this ideology and she does so by transposing herself into a man disguised as a
The nurse is explaining the root causes on how Medea became so vengeful. Medea is a very passionate and prideful woman. Medea was different from other women in Greece. “She has a temper that is vile and violent”( line 35) says the nurse. These feelings Medea had caused her to form the most devious plan she could think of.
Medea was treated unfairly in the patriarchal society that she lived in and due to the circumstances she was forced to abide by, she sought to achieve her own form of justice. Women were mistreated and regarded as inferior to men. In fact, Medea mentioned how women were like foreigners forced to abide by their husband’s laws and remain subservient. Essentially, women were treated as outsiders and were thought to need constant protection from male figures. So, when the King of Corinth kicked her and her children out of Corinth and Jason left them, she wanted revenge since she felt she had been wronged.
