Quotes Medea | Quizlet

Creon to Princess as they die: "What god destroyed your life so cruelly?"

Idea of fate

Medea to "her heart": "That you must do is fearful, yet inevitable"

Detaches herself, presents her action as fate

Medea to herself: "I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury"

Internal conflict between maternal love and desire for revenge

Medea remarking about "having" to kill her children: "How cruel! How cruel!"

Burden of motherhood prevents her from revenge, ancient Greek value of motherhood even in evil woman

Messenger describing princess in mirror immediately before she dies: "Her lifeless form reflected there"

Foreshadowing, used to build pity and fear, particularly for young, innocent princess

Messenger to Medea: "As Prosperity increases; happiness never."

Something could always happen, you are at the mercy of fate no matter what, you can never relax

Medea in first episode lament about treatment of women: "Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched"

Highlights injustices faced by women, metaphor contrasts dehumanization of women with their ability to think and feel

Medea: "I can endure guilt, however horrible; The laughter of my enemies I will not endure."

Pride is her hamartia, motivated by betrayal and humiliation

Nurse introducing Medea: "Her lovely head, speaks to herself alone, and wails • Aloud for her dear father, her own land and home, Which she betrayed"

Theme of exile, drives conflict due to her being ostracized

Medea to chorus at beginning: "O my father, my city, you I deserted; My brother I shamefully murdered!"

Lamenting exile, othering now in new situation

Chorus about Jason after he tries to justify himself: "You have betrayed your wife and are acting badly."

Jason's rhetoric masks his selfishness but this should be obvious to audience, Medea's truth ultimately shatters his defence

Nurse about Jason, in exposition: "He is guilty: he has betrayed those near and dear to"

Risk for her to say this, as he is her "master", further presents Jason as villain

Chorus about Medea before she enters play: "She glares at us like a mad bull

Or a lioness guarding her cubs."

More dehumanization, also shows intensity of her emotions

Jason to Medea: "It's not for the sake of any woman that I have made this royal marriage, but ... To give my children brothers of royal blood"

Patriarchal values, Jason abandons personal loyalties for political influence, also condescending and selfish

Descriptions of Glauce (Jason's new wife): "poor girl", "girlish temper", "daintily"

Show Glauce's innocence, builds catharsis

Nurse, after telling children to go inside before Medea first appears: "The dark cloud of her lamentations Is just beginning. Soon, I know, It will burst aflame as her anger rises."

Metaphor, foreshadows Medea's revenge, rage is uncontrollable

Chorus near beginning: "Only more utterly Is the prosperous house destroyed, when the gods are angry."

Chorus reaffirms early on the cosmological order, introduces idea of fate early on, foreshadowing

Medea character development after announcing her true plans: "Let no one think of me as humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs."

Hamartia shown, hubris, and also begins to demonize Medea to audience as she reveals her true motivation

Medea in Scene 5, before carrying out plan: "O children, o children! You have a city, and a home;"

Medea's internal conflict, doubts about her plan to kill her children

Medea in Scene 5, before carrying out plan: "The gods, and my own evil-hearted plots, have led to this"

Medea's determination to carry out her plan and kill her children

Episode 6, Medea to Messenger: "You'll give me double pleasure if their death was horrible."

Medea has become monster, juxtaposition characterizes her like this, morally repugnant

Messenger describing Glauce's death: "Her flesh, attacked by the invisible fangs of poison, melted from the bare bone, like gum-drops from a pine-tree's bark"

Imagery, simile, increase pity for princess and sympathy as she dies

Creon to his daughter as she dies: "What god destroyed your life so cruelly?"

Reference to supernatural, it is fate, not Medea that causes this

Messenger about Creon dying: "At length the King gave up his pitiful attempts; weakened with pain, he yielded, and gasped out his life."

Creon dies a defenseless, horrible death, demeaning as the royal is weakened by Medea, audience might take offense

Medea before killing her children: "her hands" will kill them

Detaching herself from the deed, it is fate/mercy

Medea after killing the King and Princess: "Life has been cruel to me"

Ironic, she is the cause of the cruelty now, Chorus resents her for victimizing herself, structural placement is important

Chorus begging Gods to intervene before children die: Medea is "barbarous", "accursed", "miserable", and "fiend"

Audience invited by Chorus to also see Medea as such, meeting stereotypes of foreigners

Chorus describing Medea as she kills her children: made of "stone" and "iron"

Shows powerlessness of chorus, Medea's power and will of the God is absolute, inevitability

Jason begging Medea to have children: "For god's sake, let me touch their gentle flesh."

Shows the shift in power dynamics, Jason's powerlesness

Jason's outdated views on women at end: "Out of a mere sexual jealousy you murder them"

Audience is more likely to relate to Jason now, and agree with him, although it shows his problematic views

Jason to Medea after children died: "To lift sword against your own little ones; to leave me childless, my life wrecked"

Triplet, shows Jason's absolute destruction and Medea's extreme power, increases pity

Creon banishing Medea: "You are clever woman, skilled in many evil arts"

Demonizes intelligent women and shows stereotype of clever and powerful women as witches

Medea, after revealing intentions to kill children: "I have no land, no home, no refuge from despair."

Structural placement shows connection of exile to revenge plots, triplet and use of asyndeton emphasize Medea's struggles as an outsider

Chorus lamenting that Medea will seek refuge in Athens: "how will this city of sacred streams, this land of strolling lovers, welcome you - a child killer."

Pleasant imagery and lexis is juxtaposed with Medea's deplorable revenge plot, mimetic of the hypocrisy in Athens

Medea manipulating Creon's weakness: "Show some pity: you are a father too, you should feel kindly towards them"

Appeals to pathos and use of imperative verbs connote the power Medea has over royals

Chorus after Medea escapes: "The things we thought would happen do not happen; The unexpected God makes possible"

Deus ex machina and allusion to fate reinforce cosmological order and catharsis through pity and fear

Jason to Medea in 1st fight: "If only children could be got some other way, Without the female sex! If women didn't exist, human life would be rid of all its miseries"

Hyperbolic, unreasonable, shows problematic attitudes, Chorus disagrees, exemplifying to audience that Jason is wrong

Chorus after Jason first fights with Medea: "Of all pains and hardships none is worse than to be deprived of your native land."

Use of pronouns, pathos, sympathy, Medea is still largely the victim here, part of their broader lament about exile, exploring this theme

Chorus before Medea's plans start: "You, for jealousy of your marriage-bed, will slaughter your children"

Medea's hamartia, audience expected to view Medea in increasingly negative light, and Jason as the victim not her

Chorus to Medea after she reveals plans (translation from our book): "Then how will such a city, watered by sacred rivers (...) welcome you, the child-killer whose presence is pollution?"

Pleasant imagery contrasted with crime, polluted implies it is unnatural

Jason to Medea after she kills children: he married "Not a woman, but a tiger; a Tuscan Scylla"

Foreigners are savages, dehumanizing, zoomorphism