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.