Tragic Hero

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own brother for it” (Euripides 620). Once others witness Medea’s devastation, they worry for what she might do. One of these people was the king himself, Creon. He knew how powerful Medea was and what she is capable of. Consequently, he exiles her from Corinth of fear for himself and his family.

At this point in the play, the audience feels sympathy for Medea. Her husband has left her for another woman and she now has to take care of their children by herself. However, Medea stops feeling sorry for herself, and soon becomes determined to get revenge on Jason and his new bride. She begs the king to let her stay in Corinth. Medea uses her intelligence and manipulation to convince King Creon to grant her one more day in the land to collect her things and children. During this time, Medea plans to “make dead bodies.” Medea goes on to speak with Jason, and by using her manipulating ways, asks for his forgiveness. She “admits” that she was acting irrationally and asks him to give his new wife a gift and to force her father, the king, to allow her children to stay in Corinth. Jason accepts the apology and the proposal. Medea makes further plans to kill the King himself, and her two children, all to torture Jason. Medea is successful in the murders as well as successful in getting revenge on Jason.

Through all the conflict, Medea became overly determined to gain justice through hurting Jason. She contemplated with herself and the decisions through much of the text, but ultimately, her desire for revenge meant more, “ I know indeed what evil I intend to do, But stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, Fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils” (639). Medea clearly has abilities above those of a normal person. However, I do not think that she used her abilities in a positive way at all. She only demonstrated qualities of manipulation, anger and devastation throughout the play. Although this literary work does not seem to be about fate, it does teach the audience about justice and revenge driven individuals. Medea would stop at no end to fulfill her plans against Jason. She also shows that many times characters that face adversity sometimes choose to wrong path rather than the right one.

These two literary works share some major characteristics as well as many major differences. Both protagonists face conflict caused by other people; the God’s determined Oedipus’ fate, and Jason leaving Medea for another woman determined hers. Oedipus and Medea are both strong willed characters that have special abilities that put them in positions of power. Most importantly, both characters were at least in part, responsible for their own demise. In Oedipus’ case, he did not have as much of a choice as Medea had. Oedipus unknowingly married his own mother and killed his own father. As a result, he inflicted physical pain on himself. This shows that his intentions were not to commit incest and murder and he felt badly for his actions. However, Medea made a choice to kill four people, including her own children. Indeed Medea was in terrible position in which Jason inflicted on her and she most certainly deserved some type of compensation or justice. Regardless, her acts of crime were purely vengeful and intentional and her feeling of justice overtook her remorse. Because of this very important fact, I would have to say that Medea does not fulfill Aristotle’s tragic hero criteria. I do not believe Medea did anything heroic to deserve the title. On the other hand, I believe Oedipus satisfies Aristotle’s tragic hero criteria. The unfortunate events that lead to his downfall was in part, his fault. However, he acted heroically in relieving the city of Thebes from the sphinx and attempting to find his father’s killer. He attempted to be a respectable king but unfortunately, his over confident qualities got in his way.

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