Patsy- Do you have a favorite character so far? I think mine is the Nurse. I like her loyalty to Medea, and her sass that she shows to the Attendant.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Medea MOR
In this first section of Medea, we were introduced to a few of the characters. One thing I find interesting about plays is that they often don't introduce their main character first, like movies or TV shoes do, or even books. In Medea, we are first introduced to the Nurse, who is very loyal to her mistress, cares for the children, and hates Jason, Medea's husband who is leaving her for the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. The Nurse makes the statement, "Jason is no friend of people in this house." Medea and Jason had gone through a lot together, leaving a trail of bodies behind them, which Medea contributed to for the sake of her love for Jason. Now, he is leaving her and she is in despair. One thing that I thought was interesting throughout the passage was how the characters talked about men. The Attendant/Tutor/Pedagogue seems as if he is making excuses for what Jason did, saying in lines 107-108, "What mortal man is not [bad to his family]? Don’t you know yet
all men love themselves more than their neighbors." Medea also herself says in lines 245-246, "Many men, I know, become too arrogant,
both in the public eye and in their homes." It will be interesting to see what other comments are made about this.
Patsy- Do you have a favorite character so far? I think mine is the Nurse. I like her loyalty to Medea, and her sass that she shows to the Attendant.
Patsy- Do you have a favorite character so far? I think mine is the Nurse. I like her loyalty to Medea, and her sass that she shows to the Attendant.
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Anna Marie- What really struck me was the sense of helplessness that Medea seems to have. She's extremely depressed, and can't seem to figure out what to do. Her depression and anger towards her husband is applied to her two young sons. Medea seemed almost like a queen to me with her stance on moraliy, and I think the nurse's line "middle way, neither great nor mean" (126) shows that she will need to seek that middle way. I predict that since this is a Greek play, the mean way will be taken. There will be multiple deaths, including Medea's and her son's, that will happen, as well as some wrath of the gods that will come down on Jason for his dishonor. After this initial depression, she will only feel rage and then will set more actions of the play forward. I would agree with your favorite character, as the Nurse seems to be the most reasonable person in the play so far. I think she'll be an important lens for the audience to view the play from, but you have to remember that she already hates Jason, so we have a biased view against him. My question for you is that there are a lot of women in this play, so what was Euripedes trying to portray through that?
ReplyDeletePatsy- I find Euripides' portrayal of the women very interesting. Medea seems downright crazy to me, especially when we see the change she goes through from when she is talking to the Chorus mourning her life and the loss of her husband, to pleading with Creon to stay in the country, to exposing her plans to take revenge by killing him, his daughter, and Jason. I thought the discretion by Medea of a woman's nature was interesting: "we have a woman's nature-- powerless to perform fine noble deeds, but very skilled in all the forms of evil" (484). Another thing I found interesting were the references to gods, such as when Medea mentions Hecate, who is the goddess of magic, and many other times throughout her and the Chorus' lines. Most of my knowledge about greek gods comes from what my grandmother taught me, and what I read in the Percy Jackson series, so it is quite interesting to read again. One thing that I found hard to follow was what will happen to the children. Creon told Medea to take the children, but Jason acted as if they were to be staying, and that he wanted to have more with his new bride so that his children could have more brothers and sister.
ReplyDeletePatsy- I was wondering about what you think will happen when Medea tries to poison her three enemies. Personally. I think she will try to poison them and fail, and will find herself trying to kill them another way. Whether she will succeed or not, I do not know, but I think Medea will not be alive by the end of the play.
Anna Marie- I think that she will succeed in poisoning her enemies, and she'll end up dying at the very end. THe narrative paints Jason as the villain, so just like Creon in Antigone, Jason will survive but be completely wrecked.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting how she discusses murder, when she says , "father and daughter; and my husband" (line 376), taking in her whole family. I think it's interesting how she discusses women as evil, too, since the usual view of women is that they're innocent and need to be protected. Since they give Medea this agency to act, it creates a very unique message about personhood in a culture when women were viwed as property rather than as individuals. It goes to a bit more normal of the culture when Jason yells at her, but she speaks her mind and again reverts the sterotyoe of a passive woman and a domineering man. She recounts how she had helped Jason, showing again that she is a person rather than just a figurine. My question this time is: does Medea's reactions and breaking the mold of sterotypes remind you of anybody? Personally it reminds me of The Bride from Kill Bill, because she's a woman who is put in a coma and loses everything, so she has to go take revenge.
Patsy- Medea's reactions remind me of a really petty person, although someone specific is not coming to mind. I have noticed a trend in society of women becoming more and more passive aggressive, and her actions and conversations reflect how manipulative she is. I am seeing more and more of how self absorbed she is, only doing things as means to an end-- and end which will involve the death of the Jason, Creon, and his daughter. Even when she talks of her children and how terrible it was of Jason to abandon them, I believe she does not care about them as much as she is leading everyone to think so. I believe her own pride is the only thing she is concerned with. This upsets me because I like the Nurse the best, and she seems to genuinely care about the children and Medea. Medea is so overcome with hatred and desire for revenge, exemplified when she said, "You see, my friends, I won’t accept my enemies’ contempt" (line 946-947). Well, I was kept reading and found out that Medea does indeed not care about her children, BECAUSE SHES GOING TO KILL THEM. She says,
ReplyDelete"He’ll never see his children alive again,
the ones I bore him, nor have more children
with his new bride, for she’s been marked to die
an agonizing death, poisoned by my drugs."
This truly does show that all that fills her thoughts is revenge. I was also struck by the fact that she reveals her plan to the Chorus leader, and doesn't seem to regret it even after he expresses to her his disapproval. Honestly, Medea bothers me with how fake she is. We are forced to conclude that the only real thing about her is what is malicious.
I had not considered how fake she was until now, but I believe that her ruse is driven by grief. This is a man she love and he decides to abandon her. I also found it interesting that in lines 977-1001 the chorus gives a speech that directly adresses the irony visible to the audience. This shows the tragedy behind Jason, as a former hero who is now going to fall to total dispair because of usual Greek convention. The fake act that Medea puts on to mourn for her children I believe could possibly be her own internal struggle with her grief. Jason also unwittingly plays a part in his own demise, allowing Medea to talk to Glauce. You have to look at the subtext, as well as look at the scene from a broad view. Medea previously had desired the future with Jason, but now she can only see sorrow in her future. She has to take revege on him for inflicting on her this pain of divorcing her, which in that society would leave her lowest of the low, and now she wants to protect herself by killing him and their sons.
ReplyDeleteAnna Marie -How else do you see irony in this play, with Medea and Jason? Does it remind you of any other particularly ironic works?
Personally, I have not read too many ironic works, but the one that comes to mind is Romeo and Juliet. I realize that Medea and Romeo and Juliet are not so similar, however it is interesting to look at the irony of love verses the irony of hatred in Medea. One of the most striking things I remember from previous English classes is the saying, "The opposite of love is indifference." When one analyzes it, it becomes clear that indeed, even hatred stems from sort of love, which is particularly evident in this play. It is interesting to see the different takes on love throughout Literature. In Pride and Prejudice, one sees hatred evolve into love, in Medea we see love become hatred, and in Romeo and Juliet, we see a love that was never fully achieved. I think it is interesting to analyze this presence of hatred that directly stemmed from hatred. It makes me ask the question: if Jason decided to apologize to Medea and take her back, would she take him back as well? I think right now, she is so wounded by the sudden wrenching away of love that she needs the revenge to fill the hole that is inside her. Personally at the end of Medea, I was surprised she herself didn't die, and that she escaped. I also thought that Jason would die, however I think the revenge of leaving him alive with nothing left was far more effective in the end. He says, "But I'll use the strength I have for grieving and praying to the gods to bear witness how you have killed my children and refused to let me hold their bodies or bury them." This line shows how much it has torn him up inside.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting how it all seemed to happen so quickly. Her revenge all seemed happen at once. She wasn't even phased by the fact that she would be revealed as a murderer, instead she seemed to almost enjoy the gruesome details, showing that the imagery provided by the messanger is proving that often the theater of the mind shows more graphic details than what could ever be portrayed on the stage. They don't even fully a show the death of his bride, as the king Creon relates what happened as a "ghastly wrestling match" (line 1214). Again the imagery of somebody fighting for life as a spirit comes to mind as Eurydices uses his words to overcome the fact that the Greek was so limited in what it could do, as well as the fact that many Greek stories relied on long passages of spoken word,rather than action. To get to your point about the endiny, I was also surpised that more people did not die. I definitely expected Medea to die, but I did not think Jason would die. I believed that once Medea had her heavenly wrath she would also commit suicide, so having her not die was against what I expected. Overall, I thought the concepts were interesting, but a modern re-interpretation would help make it more accessable for me and today's modern audience.
ReplyDeleteExcellent discussion--great points on structure (esp. starting with supporting characters and guessing who all would die) and themes (hatred from love, etc.) and the tension between the views of women and men. There actually is a modern retelling of Medea being performed in Ashland while we're there (set in LA!) but it would cost extra if anyone wanted to go to the matinee. Well done.
ReplyDelete