Medea's Otherness and Its Role in Shaping The Play Essay Example

Belonging to a particular nation community, religion and culture can be identified by focusing on the differences and borders seen between the foreigner and the people. Foreigners all thought of as barbarians in ancient Greeks. In the play, Euripes confronts thus prejudice by choosing Medea who is a foreigner and honoring her with the role of heroine which includes making her most intermittent character in the play. Many Greeks are confirmed as foreigners stereotype this as because the playwright makes Medea over passionate, vengeful and wild. The otherness of media emerges from many features. According to the play, tragedy belongs to different myths. The notion of exile otherness portrays the drama, and the difference in culture shows this.

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The notion of exile is the first feature that shows Medea otherness in the play. The nurse prologue is the first to display the exile status of Medea this permits from the first part of the play up to the time she starts implementing her vengeance plan. The second station the isolation and anguish in which are incurred in exile are stated in the chorus. She continues to claim that death is death is preferable due to the calamities faced in exile. This utter emerges from Medea own description of a deserted person. And hoe she left her homeland and is underscored through a powerful juxtaposition of words. Medea being foreigners she had to make herself acceptable to the city of the foreign land and her as to act with caution as other foreigners to because she was in need of protection. Social inferiority of media is noticed when Jason abandon the plan of marrying her. Marring of a barbarian woman in those days did not provide a dominant status.

Media gender portrays her otherness. Her monologue is described in the play. She claims that women are most abject in all living creatures in the world. They continue to say that alludes and wretchedness is superlative state of women which is caused by social structure unfairness and element of female preachment by social imperatives. She starts by identifying her situation of the plight and continue with her identification and sympathetic female chorus and further scale the whole female generation. Therefore, the vulnerability of Medea is shown in the play first part, and it is identified as her status of other. She is subject of humiliation and injustice due to this, and they had to choice but to succumb to powers which her enemies had: "and though I have been ill-used, I shall keep quiet. Those who are strong then I am have been beaten". The emergence of precarious position is shown in two supplication scenes. She assumes suppliant role towards Creon in which she had to plead with Creon so that the exile can be delayed and afterward towards Aegeus where Aegeus oath of protection is extracted from him by Medea.

The ethic otherness is enclosed in the supernatural. Sorceress status and spectral qualities of Medea are used to demonstrate Medeas' wildness and ethical oneness. Medeas spiritual qualities are shown by her overpowering presence. Before she was a victim, but later she changes this and become an agent. She punishes Jason because he broke the sacred oath had made to her. She did this by appalling retribution of tragic justice" and upward disappearance and out of people sight.

The way media is treated by other characters because she was a foreigner is essential to show ethical otherness. The foreigners were prejudiced. Due to the first stasimon, there is a suggestion that women are the construction of poetic imagination which is opposite to men. She is also represented as an ideal mother according to the Greeks standards and a wife too. But her ethical otherness is mocked by Jason who claims that due to her foreigner state she killed her children (Puchner et al., 2014). The fact is that she killed her children because she never wanted them to be Greeks with a barbarian mother. Feminine otherness is shown in the play. Before according to ancient Greeks women had no rights, and if they had, they were little. They were always treated as weak people. They were supposed to be obedient, and this is approved by Jason after marring Medea. After the betrayal, Medea character changes. Hatred fills and she plans to have revenge on her husband. This happens after Jason betrays her by marrying princess Glauce. Feminine side is rejected by Medea and start acting in a more masculine way (Puchner et al., 2014). She believes that Jason is an enemy and enemies have to be defeated in all means. " If I can find a way to work on Jason for his wrongs to me" 258-259. This shows that Jason has committed a sin and he was supposed to be punished. The felinity role as described by the society if finally broken by Medea when she takes everything Jason had by murdering her children. This shows the masculine move which Medea had to make.

This play helps to criticize the domination of the men in the society at those days. Heroine character of media is used to inspire that inspire people of fear and admiration. After the betrayal, she comes out as a different person who has strength and intelligence to punish her oppressors. Medea character is used in the play to show the differences between an individual and the culture and the relationship between them. The game continues to show how religion can affect many things. This is shown where Jason marries the princess, and at the end, Medea plots revenge and finally kills her children so that she can leave Jason with nothing (Puchner et al., 2014). The culture is facing the stress of men being superior. This is shown by Medea being masculine and starting plotting against his husband. A human character can be altered by suffering according to the play. When one is faced with harsh conditions human behavior can be changed which can be unbearable and chaotic. By used of Medea and Jason in revenge part that was unacceptable by religion and also culture could lead to war.

Conclusion

As much as women are seen as inferior, caring and submissive, hatred and resentment can change their nature to become the worst people. The culture also believes the female have emotional weakness and this describes them as well creatures in the earth. It's true to say that Medea was weak and she expressed her feminine character when she was betrayed by Jason, but this finally changes (Puchner et al., 2014). These were characters that were possessed by Medea before she was revealed. The nature of women can change, and this can lead to death as seen in the play were Medea kills her children to take revenge on her children. Thing and the nature of things had changed her into a monster.

References

Puchner, M., Akbari, S., Denecke, W., Fuchs, B., Levine, C., Lewis, P., & Wilson, E. (2014). The Norton Anthology Western Literature 9th edition (9th ed., p. 2928). Missouri: W. W. Norton & Company.