Medea

After reading Medea, written by Euripedes, I was sort of confused about some points within the play, but I attribute that primarily to the way the play was written. I must say first, however, that I overall really enjoyed reading Medea and found the whole story intriguing, despite my confusions from the writing. Although I liked the play and its theme, I absolutely could not stand the way it was written. It seemed to me that Euripedes chose to write Medea in a type of poem form. I felt personally that this poetic format sort of took away from the drama of the play. If it was written more like Lysistrata, it would have been more captivating and I feel that the whole point of the play would've been more obvious. Besides my issue with the poem format, I thought that Euripedes's intent was too display women as conviving, manipulative, and scheming individuals. Might as well throw heartless in there too, since he has Medea kill her innocent children just to cause Jason immense pain. That is another point in the play that sort of puzzled me. Why did she chose to slaughter her children, if they were supposed to be in exile alongside her? To me, I feel that that would have been able to cause the same amount of pain that Jason would feel. He is still losing his children, just in another way. And Medea would have been able to reflect a hint of humanity within herself if she had not murdered her children. Aside from those negative qualities that Euripedes chooses to represent her with, Medea is also able to use what I would call a "woman's natural charm" to convince Creon to allow her one more day before her exile from Corinth to secretly plot her revenge on him, the princess, and Jason. Aside from him, she also manages to convince a travelling man from another city to allow her refuge in his home, simply by promising to help him and his wife conceive a child. To me, the character Medea is the perfect representation of how the sneaky woman would be portrayed. Although I didn't really like her character, I didn't dislike her either. I could see how it would make sense for Medea to want to get back at her husband, who left her for a "better match". But on the same note, I think she definitely took it to the extremes. Killing the other woman and her father, not to mention her own flesh and blood, seems way over the top just to spite the man that betrayed her. But then again, this play would not have been nearly as entertaining if all this drama didn't happen.