Medea Practice Essay PDF

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A practice essay on Medea by Euripides for Yr 11 Unit 1 English ...

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‘In the play Medea, the crucial conflict is between reason and passion’. Discuss. Set in the restrictive and patriarchal society of Ancient Greece, Euripides’ tragedy Medea significantly explores the tension of the crucial conflict between reason and passion. The source of Medea’s discontent occurs through her views of passion, as her passion and rage overpowers her own rationality and leads her to a destructive pathway. Despite Medea’s internal conflict of her struggle to deal with passion and reason, the plotting of her vengeance is full of logic and reason. Jason’s decisions and his actions were purely based on reason more, rather than his passion which eventually led to the conflict. Also, Jason’s weakness through his inability to sympathise with Medea and realise the extent to which Medea’s passion destroyed the society. Therefore, as the dramatic intensity of the play unfolds, the dominant conflict between reason and passion is demonstrated from both Medea and Jason’s views, leading to the unfortunate outcome of the play. Medea’s strong malevolent behaviour derives from her strong sense of passion and rage that overrides her rationality, resulting in revenge rather than justice. Furious and bewildered that Jason attempted to deny his disloyalty to her, Medea’s thoughts were too focused as “nothing on earth has a heart more murderous” on planning revenge. It is her vigorous emotions that overtakes her logic allowing her morals to be totally ignored as to kill her “very own children” is the ultimate decision as she has “the heart” to take that action. Medea’s strong resentment and “wretched sufferings” towards Jason’s treachery causes her to be “no ordinary woman”, which highlights Medea’s passion of inflicting the pain on Creon and Princess Glauce that she had experienced as a result of Jason’s betrayal and towards committing the act of filicide. Since she is the children’s mother, it is the dismayed reaction of the chorus that “it is just that [Medea] should take revenge upon [her] husband”, that exhibits her passion to perform such brutality. In depicting Medea as “soon enough her grief like a gathering cloud will be kindled by it”, Euripides reinforces the imagery to suggest that it is the outburst of anger inflicted upon her that has turned her into all the worse. This is due to the expectation that she is supposed to demonstrate tenderly care for her children more. Furthermore, this allows her emotions to become her subsequent decision maker rather than her judgement about the situation in a reasonable way. Therefore, she does emphasise a great level of desire as her emotions have more of a say over her actions despite knowing the result of the cost of her heinous actions. Consequently, Medea’s barbarous act was the product of her excessive passion rather than logic and intensifies the conflict in the play. Logic and reason come into play as it dominates and allows Medea to overcome her internal conflict. Without logic and reason, her internal conflict of the struggle between passion and reason was not able to solved properly. Medea was logical in the sense that she was able to taper her anger in order to succeed the act of vengeance on Jason. The play presents Medea as a woman who uses reason and logic when planning the barbaric act of filicide as “to suffer the mockery of [her] enemies is something [she] will not tolerate.” Through her thoughts, she understands that she can no longer endure such pain from an unloyal husband who has “betrayed” her and her children “for a princess’ bed”, which reveals her rationality as she has thought about it carefully. Additionally, even “surrounding herself to anguish [tears]” was something she did not want to experience and, it is this that led her to the understanding that she must manipulate other characters in order for her revenge to work. Despite being questioned by “..to kill your very own children - will you have the heart for that?”, Medea still chooses to let her enemies suffer because it was the only way she was able to “hurt [her] husband the most”. Her internal struggle between killing her sons and choosing not to therefore serves to elucidate the logic, because, the fact that she knows what she was doing wrong and knew how it would hurt her allowed her to come up with reasons. The way that Medea is “aware how terrible a crime [she] is about to commit” is proof that she is capable of thoughts and knows where her decisions would take her to as well as she exhibits a sense of logic. Furthermore, the tremendous control over her emotions proves the product of her passion as she has a reason to her

act that “passion is master of [her] reason”. From this, Medea’s internal conflict was predominantly revolved around logic and reason rather than passion. The conflict initiated from Jason’s decisions to leave Medea in which he presents in a logical and reasonable way. The agon between Jason and Medea arose from Jason’s logical decisions and actions which clearly exemplifies his sense of stability. This is evident when Jason’s attempt to persuade Medea that his decision to marry a new wife was logical. He speaks in a rational way to Medea, saying that the marriage was not for “him falling hopelessly in love with a new bride” but rather to “ensure [his] properity” and for their children so that they are able to have a good future. Thus, Jason’s rational tone in delivering his arguments “skilfully and plausibly” strengthens his confidence and “proves [himself] a capable speaker”, in which he is able to make judgements that are not derived from passion. Ultimately, he speaks in a way in which his “motives were different” to what Medea had shown, demonstrating that he knows the reasoning behind his betrayal as well as contradicting Medea’s perspectives of his decisions for a new wife. By arguing that Medea was not the person who “lent success to [his] voyage” but instead “Cyprian”, the play characterises Jason as a reasonable man who knows what he is doing and he does not display a sense of passion but rather insightful in his words. It can be seen that Jason’s decisions were based on his logical arguments, arguing simply for his case and living by his society’s moral code, and this led to the conflict between Medea and Jason’s unhealthy relationship. It is Jason’s lack of empathy and passion that defines his character, turning him to be arrogant enough to underestimate Medea’s passion. In the play, his lack of passion is evident when he states that “it is natural for a woman to feel angry against a husband when he deals in contraband”. Due to his inability to realise the extent to which Medea’s passion can destroy the society, this influenced the conflict between Jason and Medea. By consistently dismissing Medea’s grievances as a case of her jealously, Euripides aims to portray how reason and passion are important in this conflict. The influence of Jason’s reasoning as evident in “..In saving me you gained more than you gave..”, led to his lack of passion for Medea whilst Medea saw the world through her views of passion. Therefore, the play suggests there is a constant struggle between reason and passion in the human life. In essence, Euripides explores the significant conflict between rationality and passion leading to the tragic ending of the play. Passion overpowers reason and logical thought leading Medea to a destructive pathway. Although her internal conflict of the battle between passion and reason was her struggle, her vengeance was sought through logic and reason. Jason’s decisions were based on reason rather than passion and his weakness to realise about Medea’s passion accordingly contributed to the crucial conflict....