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.