The chorus’s perspective of justice works differently in Euripides’ Medea and Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers. In both The Libation Bearers and Medea, the driving force of vengeance links the chorus to each of the play’s protagonists. For both plays, the choruses begin with a strong support of their heroes with a belief that the course of action that those characters are pursuing for the sake of avenging the wrongs done to them or their families is just and right. The chorus of Medea, however, moves away from that original conviction in the moral justification of revenge. Over the course of The Libation Bearers, the chorus also begins to express doubt in the validity of the true value in the cycle of deaths that the system of revenge necessitates. Both plays offer proof of a gradual rejection of the law of retribution in favor of balanced justice.
Retribution drives the plot of both plays. The chorus cites Jason’s “disregarding [of] right and loyalty” (Medea 47) as the reason that Medea needs to take revenge on Jason, and also as a reasonable justification for her original grief. Here, the women of Corinth who make up the chorus of Medea find a point of sympathy, the victimization of a wife or any other woman, which allows them to understand Medea’s anger towards Jason. The women of the chorus see her as “that unhappy woman from Colchis” (21), and their “own heart suffers” (21) for her pain at her husband’s betrayal. They “do not wonder that [she] take[s] such wrongs to heart” (25), and they also say that “to punish Jason will be just” (25). In Medea, the chorus’s identity as women gives them a predetermined inclination towards a belief in Medea’s idea of justice for Jason. The chorus of The Libation Bearers also cons...
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...f the need to “pay the enemy back in kind” (183), and avenge what they term “the outrage” (197) of Agamemnon’s death. Working in the opposite way as Medea, Orestes retains the goodwill of the chorus, even after committing a terrible crime. Unlike Medea, he is unable to escape his curse, and the Furies pursue him into a sort of madness.
The choruses in both plays indirectly express the sentiment that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society that requires the deaths of more people to atone for an earlier death. The Libation Bearers, which is followed by The Eumenides, moves closer to a resolution to that issue, with justice being served by an objective trial. Medea ends with a lament for Jason’s children, showing the extent of the injustice of a system where a mother will kill her own children. Both plays clearly present flawed views of justice.
The Greek Plays including ‘Antigone,' ‘Oedipus Rex’ and ‘Libation Bearers’ (Orestia) are generally viewed and praised as works of fine literature, written by renounced playwrights during the 5th century. The plays themselves are ample with hamartia, catharsis, irony and enriched faculties of composition. Notwithstanding its great value in literature, the Greek plays possess a unique, different dimension that is not often brought to light. The plays hold lavish significance in justice, ethics and morality. These plays articulate on these aspects by questioning the readers in forms of moral dilemmas installed in the platys. These plays prompt us with questions of strong perplexity that still intrigue and ignite debates even with our advanced contemporary political justice, and better established sense of ethics and morality. Moral dilemmas that we, as individuals, are left to ponder, and compelled to weigh our own virtues against laws, social norms and justice. Thus, not only did the Greek playwrights bestow alluring masterpieces of plays, in hindsight, they also prompted all of us with morally conflicting questions that arose alongside their development of democracy. Likewise, the life in democratic societies is rife with countless political disputes over right and wrong, justice and injustice, which are all explicitly manifested in the plays ‘Antigone,'’Oedipus Rex’ and Libation Bearers’. This essay will introduce one moral dilemma from each of the three plays and contemplate on the justice of each of the circumstances. Moreover, this essay does not aspire to present an ‘absolute’ justice to all these moral dilemmas, and to provide jurisdiction, yet, inst...
Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers was the revenge of Orestes on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The chain of bloodshed continued when Orestes plotted to his avenge his father, by murdering his mother. However, everyone in the play wanted justice to be served, as well as the gods who ordered it to take place. Tisis in Greek defines as a play which was filled with revenge. Libation Bearers contains different themes and motifs, that weren't found in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Aeschylus discussed
She gave the children the dress she made and the diadem, submerged with poison and instructed her to give these gifts to the princess under the false impression that she wants to please her so she may convince her father to allow the children to stay in Corinth. After the death of the king and the princess, Medea kills her two children. The only time the children have spoken and they plead to live. There is no future for the children, to escape their mother’s wrath and anger and her drive to hurt and destroy everything and everyone that Jason loves and cares about. Medea contributes to the work as a whole because we see her side of the story and understand the motives behind her action and the consequences as the result of her madness. Medea is the rising action and the climax of the play. We also see Jason side of the story from his conversations with Medea and his explanation was awful. He is the reason for the conflict and issues for Medea but Jason does not take care of the problems he created nor does he take the responsibility for the consequences of his actions. He married a sorceress and not a normal Greek
In Aeschylus' trilogy, the Greeks' justice system went through a transformation from old to new ways. In the beginning of the trilogy, the characters settle their matters, both personal and professional, with vengeance. Vengeance is when someone is harmed or killed, and either the victim, or someone close to them takes revenge on the criminal. This matter is proven in the trilogy numerous times. For example, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon as revenge for his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia. Along those same lines, in the second part of the trilogy, Choephoroe, Orestes, who is Agamemnon son, murders Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He does this in order to gain revenge on them for killing his father. It was by this way that people would deal with conflict, and it was thought to be not only a justice system, but also a honorable and fair. In fact, one of the principal purposes of the first play of the trilogy is to force us to recognize that justice based on revenge creates special difficulties, which in turn cannot be solved. It does not solve the problems that it is meant to, but only causes more problems that are even larger. As the third and last part of the trilogy begins, the system begins to evolve and change from vengeance to genuine justice. Instead of getting revenge on Orestes and killing him, they decide to put him on trial and have a jury decide whether or not he sho...
Justice is generally thought to be part of one system; equally affecting all involved. We define justice as being fair or reasonable. The complications fall into the mix when an act of heroism occurs or morals are written or when fear becomes to great a force. These complications lead to the division of justice onto levels. In Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Plato’s Republic and Apology, both Plato and Aeschylus examine the views of justice and the morality of the justice system on two levels: in the city-state and the individual. However, Plato examines the justice system from the perfect society and Aeschylus starts at the curse on the House of Atreus and the blood spilled within the family of Agamemnon.
In the play "Medea", Medea faces the harsh reality of infidelity. Her husband Jason has left her for a princess. Medea, like any normal woman today would want revenge. The difference between them is that the normal woman would not commit the crime, while in fact Medea does. After what feels like an eternity of planning and vowing revenge she devises a plan to murder the woman who has stolen her husband as well as her husband and their two children. She feels betrayed and has every right to. Imagine in that time that it was a crime to commit adultery, but because Jason had left his wife for a princess it was plausible which left Medea livid.
Aeschylus, was a master dramatist - he liked to portray conflict between persons, human or divine, or between principles.1 His trilogy of plays, the Oresteia, develops many conflicts that must be resolved during the action of the Eumenides, the concluding play of the trilogy. The central theme of the Oresteia is justice (dike) and in dealing with questions of justice, Aeschylus at every stage involves the gods.2 The Oresteia's climactic conflict in the Eumenides revolves around justice and the gods - opposing conceptions of justice and conflicting classes of gods. This essay will describe and discuss these conflicts and, more importantly, the manner in which they are resolved so that the play, and indeed the entire trilogy, might reach a satisfactory conclusion.
In Medea, a play by Euripides, Jason possesses many traits that lead to his downfall. After Medea assists Jason in his quest to get the Golden Fleece, killing her brother and disgracing her father and her native land in the process, Jason finds a new bride despite swearing an oath of fidelity to Medea. Medea is devastated when she finds out that Jason left her for another woman after two children and now wants to banish her. Medea plots revenge on Jason after he gives her one day to leave. Medea later acts peculiarly as a subservient woman to Jason who is oblivious to the evil that will be unleashed and lets the children remain in Corinth. The children later deliver a poisoned gown to Jason’s new bride that also kills the King of Corinth. Medea then kills the children. Later, she refuses to let Jason bury the bodies or say goodbye to the dead children he now loves so dearly. Jason is cursed with many catastrophic flaws that lead to his downfall and that of others around him.
During the time of Aristotle, revenge was seen as something of honor. It was considered noble to try to restore your honor after someone intentionally caused you shame or harm. You were looked at as a coward if you did not try to sneak and plot your revenge. Revenge can either be sought after for ones own internal satisfaction, but in this book, it is usually required because of what others might think as far as ones reputation is concerned. During Aristotle’s time, if you were seeking revenge one had strict guidelines to follow to ensure that the one seeking revenge was doing it out of honor and integrity. In this paper, we will view if the character Odysseus followed these guidelines on two occasions when he was seeking revenge. The two main events of revenge in the book were against the Cyclops and the suitors that were courting his wife.
Revenge is a desire by human nature. Someone does something to you that you don’t like you would want to proceed with taking revenge automatically. Revenge is an emotion and a demand for justice. Women have the desire to seek revenge far more than men. Women will go far as they wish as for men will let conflicts slide off their backs. An example of this is shown in the play Medea, Medea retaliates at a far greater impact than her ex-husband, Jason. Medea played the role of being a woman that is ex-wife and a mother that is faced with seeking revenge throughout the play. She is a woman that definitely acts one way, and turns her back and acts a different way. At the end of the play, it was revealed what type of person she truly was. Although Medea sought to have a process of vengeance on Jason that consisted of her determination to have a set plan to stay in Corinth,
When Jason left Medea to marry Glauce, Medea was plagued with sadness and then with anger. The man she loved, the man that she gave up her life for, had betrayed her. In the patriarchal society that Medea lived in, it was not acceptable for a woman to protest any decision made by her husband. Medea went against all social standards and took revenge on Jason for the wrongs that he had committed. She was willing to take any chance and sacrifice even her most valued possessions. Medea knew that the best way to avenge the wrongs of Jason was to kill Glauce and the children. It was a huge sacrifice for Medea to kill the children that she loved, but she allowed herself to look past that love and only see her hate and contempt for Jason. Medea was willing to go against every rule that society set, so that her husband wouldn't get away with leaving her for political reasons.
"Chorus in Greek Theater." Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature, Second Edition. Facts On File, 2014. Ancient and Medieval History Online. Web. 16 Nov. 2015. A typical chorus is a group of singers usually performing with an orchestra, and is refer to by most people in modern day time as a choir. In Ancient Greek a chorus is usually consist of a group of men who would sang and danced. According to Facts On File “s Greek theater had its origins in religious liturgy, the chorus also sprang from associated ritual occasions and participated in both tragic and comic performances.” Greek theater can be compared the most to opera because of the characteristic that it holds. The choral parts were chanted then followed by danced with either half or the
Medea’s illegitimate marriage and the betrayal of Jason drive Medea to extreme revenge. Medea chooses to act with her immortal self and commit inhumane acts of murder rather than rationalize the outcomes of her actions. Medea see’s this option as her only resort as she has been banished and has nowhere to go, “stripped of her place”. To create sympathy for Medea, Euripides plays down Medea’s supernatural powers until the end of the play. Throughout the play Medea represents all characteristics found in individual women put together, including; love, passion, betrayal and revenge. Medea’s portrayal of human flaws creates empathetic emotions from the audience. The audience commiserates with Medea’s human flaws as they recognize them in themselves. Medea plays the major role in this play as she demonstrates many behavioral and psychological patterns unlike any of the other Greek women in the play; this draws the audience’s attention to Medea for sympathy and respect.
The Chorus, in this play, guides the audience. In the end, it is up to the individual as to what reaction they have to the play, but the Chorus is there to, in a way makes this reaction more complicated. One could leave the play totally condemning Medea, but the Chorus display’s Medea in a way that makes the audience sympathise with her, and so the moral conclusions that need to be come to side, become more complex. The audience has to base their reaction to Medea on what crimes they have seen her commit, and on what they have heard of her through the Chorus. Their integral part in the play acts in many ways, to follow, revise, and extend the plot of the play, and to influence the opinions and sympathies of the audience. It is a literary, and dramatic device that Euripedes uses, and uses well, to help portray a tragedy, and also a moralistic play, in which the Chorus is the voice that provides the morals.
"Finally, the play opens with Medea's Nurse indirectly giving background information to the story about to unfold. It is quickly understood by the audience that Jason, the husband of Medea, for whom she disowned her family and had killed for, has left her for the King of Corinth (Creon's) daughter - a beautiful princess. Medea is outraged by this and is set on seeking revenge on him.