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Jake Meisenheimer
K. Gaspari
English 10
29 February 2012
Medea Literary Analysis
Medea starts out with her nurse giving a prologue and introduces us to the current
situation, which is in the middle of the story. Medea is introduced and appears to be very
crazy and wants revenge for what Jason did to her. Creon who is the king of Corinth
comes to Medea’s home and speaks about her banishment. Medea begs for another day
before being banished which the king grants. A king named Aegeus came not long after,
she is a close friend of his and he is not aware of her banishment or that Jason has left
Medea. He makes an oath to the gods that he will protect her even if Creon come to get
her. Jason comes to see Medea and told her that the only reason he married Creon’s
daughter is because he wanted to protect Medea and her children. Jason and Medea
reveal that they still show sign of lust and love towards each other. Medea once alone
plots her revenge on Creon and Jason. She uses her dark arts to kill the kings daughter
which is also Jason husband. When Jason arrives to Medea’s house to react on what she
did he also gets informed that Medea killed her two kids to get back at Jason. Medea
finally achieves her goal but she suffers as well by killing her two only children.
There were many themes portrayed in this play. The key one I believe was
jealousy, I think jealousy was a main theme because all the drastic actions that Medea
took were out of complete jealously like killing Creons daughter just because she loved
Jason. Also at the end of the play when she kills her two sons to get back at Jason once
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again, that is not only a sign of jealously but a clear signal of insanity. In Medea a theme
was obviously insanity because of Medea’s irrational and impulsive decisions that not
only affected her but many others around. When she killed Creon’s daughter it showed
insanity, she decided to do this just in spite of Jason and Creon for deciding to banish her.
Manipulation was a key role in Medea, it was shown not only by Medea herself but Jason
as well. Before the play Jason manipulated and used his charm to sway Medea into
falling in love with him so that he could gain power in her land. Once he goes back to
Corinth he uses his manipulation once again to win the heart of the kings daughter and
gain power in the city-state. With no need for Medea anymore he leaves her. Revenge is
also a theme that doesn’t show until the climax when it is announced that Creons
daughter died because of Medea. Revenge is shown again at the end of the play when she
kills her two kids to get revenge on Jason.
Medea is similar to feminist in modern society. She is similar because back in
ancient Greece all women were just property to the husband and she was not like that, she
wanted to be treated as an equal which was unheard of in their society at that time. I like
how there were a lot of different internal and external conflicts as well as different
themes. What I didn’t like is the different words they used and how it was hard to
understand. No I would not recommend it to a friend because I think it was a boring story
and it did not keep my interest what so ever.
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Work Cited
Euripides, Medea. New York: Dover Publications, Inc 1993 Print.