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Mairead Hurley
K. Gaspari
English 10
3 March 2016
Medea Literary Analysis
The ancient Greek play of Medea, written by Euripedes, is a tragic story about a
woman driven insane by her husband’s betrayal. So much so, that she takes her revenge
to extremes. This woman’s name is Medea, and her husband, Jason. The play starts out
narrated by Medea’s nurse, to give the viewer a bit of background information. Medea is
hiding inside her house, grieving, while there are rumors of her exaltation twirling about
Corinth. Medea hears of these rumors by her children’s tutor. She is then visited by
Creon, the King of Corinth, to swear these rumors true, and, out of compassion and
Medea’s begging, Creon grants Medea one day before she is to be exiled. Shortly after,
Jason arrives. They argue with each other about how Jason betrayed Medea to marry a
young princess (the daughter of Creon), and then Jason leaves. Aegeus, the King of
Athens and friend of Medea, tells her that she has a safe and protected place in Athens
after she is exiled from Corinth. Jason is then called back to Medea’s home, and the two
talk about the placement of the children. Medea says that it is better for the children to
stay with their father and go live in Creon’s palace. Medea wishes to give the princess
gifts which are secretly dressed in poison. She apologizes to Jason about her previous
actions, hands Jason and her children the gift for the princess, and Jason and the children
leave. Shortly after, it is heard by word of mouth by a messenger that the princess and
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Creon were both dead after the princess having caught on fire, and Creon trying to put it
out. The children return, and Medea sees that Jason loves the children, too. Wanting to
rid Jason of love and happiness, Medea proceeds to kill her children. Shortly after, Jason
arrives, furious. He then finds out that Medea has killed his children, and forever he shall
suffer, just as Medea intended.
This play presented many different themes. The author, Euripedes portrayed these
themes through Medea. Revenge, betrayal, manipulation, selfishness, and insanity are all
present within the text. Revenge, because Medea plotted to kill the princess and the
children just to hurt Jason, as he did her. Betrayal, because Jason leaves Medea to marry
a much younger princess, therefore Medea proceeds to murder her kids. Manipulation,
because Medea makes King Creon feel back for her, and she also convinces Jason that
she is okay. Selfishness comes into play because Jason marries the princess for power,
and also because Medea just wants Jason to feel pain and suffer. Lastly, insanity is a
relevant theme because Medea drives herself crazy with anger in order to make Jason
miserable.
To reflect upon the play Medea, I would like to say that Medea’s character did not
compare with what we learned about women in Ancient Greece. We learned those
women were basically used just to produce children, and that they basically had no power
or influence in society. Medea contradicts this because she was able to convince kings,
and kings wanted to offer her protection. Jason used her to gain power because Medea
was a princess of her homeland, so she wasn’t just used to produce children. She also
owned valuable possessions, and had enough power to kill a princess and the King of
Corinth, a well as her own children to get back at a man. It would seem that most women
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in Ancient Greece would not dare to do something as drastic. This element is what I
didn’t like too much about this play, but for the most part, I enjoyed everything else.
Don’t get me wrong, I strongly dislike death, what I liked was the fact that the events in
this okay were one after another and there really was no beating around the bush, things
just happened. I would definitely recommend this story to somebody studying Ancient
Greek literature, because for one thing, it took place in Ancient Greece. There isn’t a lot
of writing from that time period that has survived thousands of years, so every piece of
information that we can get it important. I don’t see why a person studying Ancient
Greek literature wouldn’t read Medea.