2006-10-27 04:24:25 · 6 answers · asked by jenn123456 2 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
I like my wife's answer to that whole issue. "If it were me, I'd have impaled Jason on the Argo's prow and spared the children."
My wife rocks. :-)
2006-10-27 12:34:53 · answer #1 · answered by melaskinados 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
To the ancient Greeks, Jason would be the one to blame. By divorcing Medea, he rendered his own children bastards and outcasts, and they probably would have been forced to live a life of beggary or truck-patch farming. Or worse, they could have wandered from place to place, like Oedipus in his exile, doomed never to have a home or a community. For a king's sons to suffer this ignominy was insufferable to the ancient Greeks.
Euripedes' play Medea was roundly booed when it debuted at the Athens Dionysia because it did not present a clearly good figure who suffered a clear fall. This went against the all-or-nothing mentality of the prize-winning tragedies (observe that Oedipus is entirely good, and his fall is truly piteous). But it is just this ambiguity, this lack of a clear "bad guy" who is obviously to blame, that makes this play so modern, and so well loved by today's producers and theatre companies.
Rather than seeking to pin the blame on a particular character, modern readers of Medea need to look for how each character's choices leads to the conclusion, and try to find where the course of events becomes inevitable. At the beginning, nobody has to die, but by the end, blood is the only way a savage world can make good on its savage inequities. Medea and Jason are responsible for their choices; only when you find which choice made all others necessary will you find who is to blame.
2006-10-27 04:33:21 · answer #2 · answered by nbsandiego 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They were both in some ways to blame. Medea probably shares the greater responsibility. But Jason is not free of blame. I agree that each character's decisions led to the ultimate tragic ending. And Jason's actions, decisions, attitude seemed to have pushed her over the edge. Sort've like handing her a weapon and saying I don't care what you do with it.
All that being said, I think Medea definitely had mental and psychological issues. Not excusing her behavior, but she couldn't have been sane by that point. Whereas, Jason had his sanity, he was just a jerk.
2006-10-27 04:50:44 · answer #3 · answered by laney_po 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
By the standards of the time, Jason is more to blame. By discarding Medea and their kids, he disinherited them. In a way, Medea was doing a humane deed to end the lives of such wretched kids. Still, I couldn't do such a thing as kill my own kids, and women are said to be more attached to them than men. I would hope for the best for them, before I did anything as final as kill them. I think Jason himself became an outcast and was killed when a piece of the rotting Argo fell upon him.
2006-10-27 04:49:31 · answer #4 · answered by miyuki & kyojin 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In my opinion,NOTHING,and I mean NOTHING gives a man or a woman license to kill one's children.In simple words,Jason was a grand bastard no doubt for leaving his wife,but Medea was a bigger ***** for murdering her own children to punish him.
2006-10-27 04:44:34 · answer #5 · answered by wild_rebel 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
What? Are you joking?
Madea was an irrational, manipulative whack job and no one did it BUT her.
Jason was the jerk-off (supreme king of them actually) that inspired the deed, but it was her choice and her decision to do what she did.
Now if it was me... I would have stolen the other broad from him and then dumped them both, taken my kids and married someone above him and then... I would have my new hubby buy their old domicile and have it pulled apart at the pillar by Elephants and stomped on.
But that's just me...
2006-10-27 04:33:04 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋