Month: October 2008

Peter Wolkofsky and Tony Chen

The character of the Pardoner in “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer is quite a scary person when you read about it. The Pardoner is a man who collects money from people who want to get rid of their sins. This money is supposed to go to the hospital, in this case St. Mary of Rouncivalle. This man is supposed to be an honest man who collects charity to give to the hospital so that it can run more efficiently.

In Chaucer’s case in “The Canterbury Tales” the Pardoner is a phony “He made dupes of the Parson and his flock. Although his conscience was little plastic he was in church a noble ecclesiastic” (Chaucer, 688-690). The appearance portrayed by the Pardoner is of a sleazy kind human being “This Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax, but it hung as smoothly as a hank of flax” (Chaucer, 657-658). This pardoner knew once he started to do his shtick, he had to be on his game so he would get his money. This Pardoner prided himself on being very good at being a con-artist “For he understood that when this song was sung, Then he must preach, and sharpen up his tongue To rake in cash, as well he knew the art, And so he sang out gaily with full heart”(Chaucer, 693-697).

In today’s society the Pardoner would remind me of a con-artist. Someone who pretends to be someone they are not to take advantage of innocent people.

One would not thin that both the Old Testament and the New Testament are quite similar but, to my surprise they really are. In the Old Testament Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai to receive the ten commandments, while Jesus in the Old Testament goes up to a mountain to receive directions from God. In the Old Testament Moses is afraid that his people do not believe in the power of God and will try and come up the mountain. God proclaims that if anyone touches the mountain than they will die. In the New Testament God says if his people do anything of that sorts they will not be allowed in the kingdom of heaven. In both versions the people are hungry and tired and need a sign from God do that they can worship him.

Both the Old and New Testament are timeless pieces of literature that can be compared, or contrasted. Over the years many worshipers have done so. As you can see, there are most definetly more ways to compare the two.

While on one hand you can understand why Medea kills her husband Jason and their two children, the other hand says that you are crazy to even try and relate to this occurrence.  It is never justifiable that any women kill her husband and children.  In today’s world Medea would have been locked up for life.  I can understand why Euripides tries to make the reader sympathies with Medea but taking revenge by killing your children is too much for me.  Medea looses all of her sympathetic credibility at this point and is totally blinded by her hurtful actions.  Therefore almost justifying her anger and rage towards Jason.  I find Medea to be mentally unstable, so she does not believe that what she is doing is truly wrong.  All she cares about is revenge against her husband.  She even goes as far to pretend to admit to overreacting to what Jason has done to her.

Rage is a blinding emotion that for most of the time is not justifiable.  The odd thing is Euripides tries to justify this emotion. Medea is a woman whose husband and soul mate has been cheating on with another women.  Any person who has a soul would understand that this is the most embarrassing and heartbreaking thing a man can do to a women.  Therefore Euripides is justifying the fact that Medea is Keene on taking revenge upon Jason “And poor Medea is slighted, and cries aloud on the/Vows they made to each other, the right hands clasped/Internal promise…/She lies without food and gives herself up to suffering,/Wasting away every moment of the day in tears”(Euripides, 20-25).  The other thing that Jason did to Medea was to use her.  After a while she realized this and hates Jason for it.  When Jason was with his men and found Medea in her hometown she betrayed her country and its king to be with Jason.  She gave up so much for him and now he has betrayed her and left her for another women.  After killing everybody Jason tries to curse Medea but she says that there is no God that would listen to him because he is a liar and a cheater “What heavenly power lends an ear/ To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver?”(Euripides,1366-1367).

These examples I used in my opinion do not truly mitigate the actions that Medea did to her family.  She wanted to kill everyone that Jason loved to as a form of torture.  Not realizing that killing her own children is a form of torture for herself as well.  The only way I can justify any killing would be if Medea killed Jason alone.  Which in my heart still feels terribly wrong.  Medea was hurt from Jason’s unforgivable actions of cheating but, he did not love her anymore and essentially broke up with her prior to marrying his new wife.  Euripides tries to give valid examples but in retrospect nothing justifies murder.

My personal understanding of a tragic hero is somebody that has everything and looses it in a very short period of time.  The first person that comes to mind is Julius Ceasar, who was king and within a very short period of time was dead because of it.  The issue with Medea is that she is quite bitter over the fact that her husband has left her.  This ultimately leads to her downfall, through pain and hate.  Euripides is speaking through Medea on behalf of all women.  Medea is portrayed as a very strong willed women who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.  Throughout the dialogue you learn more of the story why Medea is so angry.  She abandoned her family to be him; she helped her husband Jason really to become a man among other things.  She even had part in helping killing a man, this is sacrifice in ones life no matter which way you look at it “Where am I to go?  To my father’s?  Him I betrayed and his land when I came with you”(line 490-491)

Because she cursed the children and her husband Jason the king of Corinth Kreon has banished her from his land.  We can already see how the chain of events are leading towards a very harsh downfall even a death in someone’s life at this point.  Medea’s plan is to kill her two children and Jason’s new wife so that he will suffer more than she has.  This is just a terrible and wrong thing to do as a human being.  People have feelings that can be hurt but you must be able to move on.  The only way to move on is time, not to kill your children because their father did something terrible to you.  During this time the chorus foreshadows that her motherly instincts will kick in and she will not be able to kill her only two children.  While she is fake reconciling with Jason the tutor comes in to give the good news of the children not going to be banished.  Instead of Medea being happy she now is sad because she knows she has doomed Jason’s wife and her children to death.

This is why Medea is a tragic hero; soon after this another messenger comes into the chambers and tells Medea to flee the city because she is being blamed for the death of Jason’s wife and her father Kreon the king of Corinth as well as the death of her two sons.  She then has one last encounter with Jason showing no remorse as to the fact that she killed everything that Jason loved.  This was good enough for her to be happy with the outcome.  She also believed that killing her two sons were worth Jason’s pain and suffering.

To me at the beginning of this play Medea seems to be the victim of the chain of events.  At the end Medea is still the victim of the events without realizing it at this specific time.  While ruining Jason’s life she also ruined her own.  Is the price of revenge truly worth it?  Do you really become satisfied and happy seeing other people suffer because you were a victim yourself?  These thoughts always bring me to the idea of the dark side in “Star Wars” “anger leads to hate, hate leads to pain, pain leads to suffering” this is all true and that is how you become a bad and evil human being.  For Medea at the end of the play is lower than a normal human being.

“In the beginning God created heaven and the earth.” (Genesis, 56)  This quote from the old testament explains how the basis of the world we live in today.  With a snap of his fingers God created what we call earth, it is as simple as that.  All my life I have been conditioned to believe this quote.  Going to religious school for most of my life, learning about the story of creation.  Now with my own experiences living life, reading literature, studying these types of things I still believe that this is the way that we were created.  Never reading “Gilgamesh” or “Metamorphosis” I did not know what kind of stories to expect.  Finding out about the history of when these two stories took place made me think for a bit.  Gilgamesh was pretty much the first piece of literature that we have other than the bible.  Which is my point, the bible was the first piece of literature that people read thousands of years ago.  The bible is many thousand years old, therefore I believe there are similarities in these stories because they are based upon Genesis loosely.

Having such a strong Jewish background I can only agree with the bible about creation.  If you look past the fact that we don’t really know if it is true at all.  What I do know is that regardless of the truth it does bring up modern day problems and issues.  That is why I would prefer to read and teach the story of Genesis.