Medea Study Guide

Medea Study Guide

Author:
Original title:
Mήδεια
Published:
April 19th 1993 by Dover Publications (first published -431)
Setting:
Corinth (Greece)
ISBN 0486275485 (ISBN13: 9780486275482)

“Medea” belongs to the authorship of a great Ancient writer Euripides. It is based on a story of a woman whose husband leaves her for another princess. In despair, she kills his new wife and her own children.

There are cultures that consider ungratefulness to be the worst sin. In such cultures, Medea would have been acquitted of crime and understood very well. However, in the modern Western culture, Medea is interpreted as a woman suffering to secure a position in a world dominated by man.

In some sense Medea restores justice. She sacrificed many things for her husband who turned on her as soon as he saw a better opportunity for himself. Jason isn’t sorry for his actions, he is proud of his entrepreneurship and thinks that he will not be punished for such frivolous doings. Turns out he didn’t know his wife very well.

Medea is a woman that won’t stop until she completes what’s on her mind. She is fierce, fearless and hurt. She is emotional and overwhelmed with feelings of not deserving what she got. But her actions are cold-hearted, her logic is impeccable. Because death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a human.

The worst thing is to live and watch your dear ones die. In case of Jason, the worst thing for him is to lose something that he values a lot, like the wife that would make him rich and powerful. His punishment is the destruction of a well-crafted plan.

Oh, and the moral of the story. The moral would definitely shame Medea for her actions. But to look at it from another perspective – she did everything for the sake of her beliefs and convictions, there’s also a certain place in heaven for people like that. But then again, Antiquity didn’t believe in heaven.

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