Revenge is Sweet: The Theme of Betrayal and Revenge in Euripides' Medea

Euripides crafted his master piece Medea, empowering the female protagonist by giving her masculine traits and characteristics. The characteristics make her one of the foremost controversial female figures in Greek mythology. Medea’s story can be sum-up by one word: revenge. Revenge is sweet for Medea and, as explored in this essay, revenge becomes Medea’s ultimate desire and the motivating factor of her actions. Medea explores the same theme Catullus has addressed in his poems about love. Love makes people act illogically according to their emotions. Betrayal in love turns into rage, anger and aggression leading the lovers to the extreme.

Betrayal and Epiphany: Medea's Turning Point

Driven by her love, Medea murders her brother in order to be with Jason. Leaving everything behind, she flees with Jason and gives birth to two boys who she considers the fruit of her love. Despite the fact that she sacrificed her family, life, and wealth to be with him, Jason would rather climb higher on the social ladder and grant a respectable status than stay with Medea. His engagement to King Creon’s daughter, grants him authority, power, and wealth as opposed to what he would gain by staying with a barbarian wife. Regardless of the promises Jason gives to Medea in keeping her as his mistress, Medea sees his engagement as betrayal to her love.

Medea reaches her epiphany, the sudden moment of insight, realizing she sacrificed all of what she had once, for someone who does not deserve it. For not acknowledging what she has done to him and feeling betrayed, she acts according to the “do not challenge someone who has nothing to lose” quote. Medea plants the seeds of her revenge scheme. On her “who to kill” list comes the new bride-to-be, the king, and surprisingly her children. Before taking any actions, she secures a place to flee once she is done with her plot. She cunningly plans the first murder, sending a poisoned robe to the bride-to-be. Medea proves her cleverness by using her children as the innocent messengers of her gifts, in an attempt not to expose her scheme.

Killing her children is considered one of the prominent events that granted timelessness to the play. The crime Medea committed turned the audience from the state of pitying into despising her. Losing everything she once had, made Medea look down on anything that had united her with Jason, including her own boys. Killing them was the last step in cutting all of the links that might remind her of what Jason had done to her. Medea is a clear-cut image of a woman who is blinded by the idea of revenge and vengeance. She is hurt and abandon by her husband who is seeking prestige and wealth.

Final Thought

To my mind, the act of killing her boys aroused several assumptions and possibilities as to why she acted this way. It might be possible that due to the feeling of betrayal she came to the conclusion that her children would one day hurt her as their father had. It may also be a possibility that she might have killed her children to prevent any chance of them slowing her down. Or, and what most appeal to me, realizing that she will not be able to take them with her and at the same time not being able to bare the idea of leaving them behind, to see them dead is better than living banned from seeing them. 

References

1. Euripides. (431 BCE). Medea. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg: Link
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