Lust for Vengeance Leads to Destruction

Lust for Vengeance Leads to Destruction

Northrup Frye once said, “ Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human

landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great tress more

likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may, of course, be instruments

as well as victims of the divine lightning”. Medea is the tragic hero in her story, and in the story

she wants to bring the downfall to Jason. In the play Medea what happens is Medea is wedded to

Jason of Aragon and she does all of these things for him. Then all of a sudden Jason gets a better

offer to marry a princess. He then takes the offer and tries to get married. Medea opens up with

the Nurse and the Tutor talking back and forth then you start to hear Medea talk. As the story

progresses Medea gets the idea to poison the princess with her children bearing the gifts. After

that the princess and the king are all dead along with the children. Jason finds out about this and

wants Medea to release the children over to him, and she refuses. In Euripides’ Medea, Medea is

driven purely by vengeance to achieve her agenda of getting back at her cheating husband. The

suffering Medea brings onto herself and other characters in the play emphasizes the idea that a

lust for vengeance leads to destruction.

On her path to destruction, Medea decides to get back at Jason by ruining his wedding.

When she hears news that his new bride is the princess, King Creon’s daughter, she formulates a

plan; kill the princess. In her soliloquy she says she will “send one of my servants to find Jason

and request him once more into my sight. And when he comes, the words I’ll say will be soft

ones. I’ll say that I agree with him, that I approve the royal wedding he has made, betraying me”

(Euripides 25). Medea tricks Jason into believing she is okay with the wedding when she really

just uses Jason as an instrument to kill Creon, as she “ will send her some gifts which are far

fairer, I am sure of it, than those which now are in fashion, a finely woven dress and a golden

diadem” (Euripides 30). The dress and the crown are to be poisoned, killing the princess as a

way of getting back at Jason. Medea’s vengeance takes an even darker path when it comes to her

Killing the princess was not enough for Medea so to further her revenge on her husband

she takes it a step farther; killing her children. She makes the children take the gifts,

commanding them “There, children, take these wedding presents in your hands” (Euripides 31).

In doing this she has poisoned the children as well, but they