Themes of Violence in Medea

             Euripides wrote "Medea" in the traditional Greek model for a classic tragedy. It involves a hero, Medea, who starts out with high status and a pretty good life. Her flaw is her psychotic behavior toward Jason after he leaves her. She then has a fall when she loses her city, her status, her husband, and her home. Later, she loses Jason's wife, his wife's father, and her own children, even though that was all her doing.
             In the conclusion of the play, Euripides decided not to have Medea kill Jason. He did this because he thought that to completely show the amount of pain Jason must go through after losing his children, and if he died, the pain would be instantly gone. Jason is the mellower one out of him and Medea, since he never even tried to stop Medea, even though he knew how crazy she was. Also, he didn't try to retaliate on her in any way after she completely slaughtered their children. After this play ends he probably got as far away from Medea as possible and tried to move on.
             Medea was kept alive by Euripides in the conclusion of the play as well. He didn't kill her off because she now had to live with the fact that she killed her children just to show her hatred for Jason. As it said in the play "I loathed you [Jason] more than I loved them [the children]." Medea is the type of person who would be in a room with padded white walls if she lived in our time. In her situation, there were other ways to deal with this, but this was the most suited to her character. This ending definitely kept the audience guessing what Medea's next move would be. This supports the theme because all the violence led to more and more, and eventually she was alone.
             The exodos of the play are connected to the theme in that after all of the killings and murder that Medea committed, she ends up alone and has to start a whole new life. She will always have a violent mind, though, because she will have to fall asleep every night remembering the murde...

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Themes of Violence in Medea. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 23:35, April 29, 2025, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/18246.html