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Medea, lines 681-end

Student blog posts

During this part of the play Medea shows just how clever and cunning she is by the way she exacts her revenge on Jason. She begs Jason to broker peace and to stop the exile of her sons. Jason agrees and, even though it might seem as though all is well for all the characters in the story, unbeknownst to him he carries out Medea’s plan to kill the bride and king. Using her sons as pawns, Medea manages to poison both the bride and the king; effectively killing them and fulfilling part of her plan. By the end, though she struggled with the idea, she fulfills the last part of the plan and also kills her sons—with the excuse that they would suffer a worst fate due to her own actions. Her revenge complete, she admits to Jason—who catches a glimpse of the dead children before she flies off in a winged-chariot—that she is in pain because of what she has done but that, in a sense, making him suffer was worth it.

I think this half of the story is even more interesting than the first half because we don’t just see Medea planning her revenge but also exacting it. It’s also interesting because the themes of the play, such as revenge and betrayal, are slightly more explored and we are shown how they can only lead to tragedy. For one, by the end of the story we get the sense that Medea will never be happy because she pursued revenge. She had already betrayed her family back in her homeland and now, because of her scheming and plotting, she killed the only family she had left: her children. On another note, the consequences of betrayal also affected Jason; who in the end is left with neither his children, the bride or the possibility of becoming king. In a way, Medea and Jason encompass the themes of revenge and betrayal, respectively, and they were both at fault so the fact that the story ends as it does with neither of them completely happy feels slightly justified.

However, something that really intrigued me about this part of the play was the ending—the last lines of the chorus—which seems to allude that the Gods helped make the events transpire (Medea’s revenge and escape) or maybe even approved of them. In a way, this would be really twisted and weird because, by the end of story, Medea has committed far more horrible acts than Jason. So, had the Gods sided with Medea all along? Some type of divine retribution against Jason?

The Song of Creation

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The creation story that most stood out to me was “The Song of Creation” from the Rig Veda. I think that this creation story is really different from the rest in the sense that it addresses and ponders the existence of nothingness before the existence of anything through the entire song. In my opinion, addressing this intrigues us with the universal dilemma of why we exist and how exactly did we come to be; something that has no definite answer. It raises questions and makes us wonder about our origins and the beginning of life as a whole which, in comparison to the mythic/ fantastical nature of the other stories, makes it feel much more real and historic. This, in conjunction with the the ambiguous nature of the whole song, make  “The Song of Creation” really interesting.

Particularly, it’s very interesting because there are no specific details or explanation given for the creation. For example, there is no specific god or creator mentioned, in contrast to some of the other stories, except for “The One”, who is only mentioned vaguely in a few lines, and who I believe managed to coexist with the nothingness (line 7) as probably the creator of the world and life—but it is never stated. It is also really interesting to me that I directly correlated the line “arose at last born of the power of heat” (line 12) to the Big Bang; possibly because of relating heat to an explosion. Even though I don’t think the allusion was intentional, it is still interesting how a line like this could be interpreted as a real event.

All in all, I think it’s very interesting how peculiar and different this song is in relation to other creation stories. There is a certain comfort in the ambiguity but also a slight frustration that arises from not knowing the answers. However, I think the vagueness of the text allows for more interpretation and helps the song avoid falling into any type of specific religion or culture, since it isn’t that specific in terms of beliefs or gods, making it very accessible.