Shifting Sympathies
... horrors? What the reader learns next would make anyone grieve for Medea and what she has been through for Jason’s love that he now has given to his new, younger bride: “I cheated my father for you and tamed the fire-breathing brazen-hoofed bulls; and…saved your life in the field of teeth;…and fled with you, and killed my brother when he pursued us making myself abominable in my own home: and then in yours I got your enemy Pelias hacked to death by his own daughters’ hands…”(1.1.294-99). However the sympathies of the reader do not always stay with Medea. Medea has chances to change the outcome of the play but by refusing them she also loses the audience’s pity. Medea’s nurse learns that a guest in the house of Creon, the king banishing Medea, is Aegeus. Aegeus is from Athens and tells Medea that he will shelter her after she is banished. The reader then sees Medea hesitate and not jump to accept his offer which the audience would assume someone facing exile would do. Creon tells Medea, “If you by your own means come to Athens I will take care of you.” (1.1.437-38). Aegeus then asks Medea if she will come to Athens and she replies, “If I choose”. She should be saying, “Yes, right away I will leave today”. Instead she plots her revenge and how she will make Jason suffer which takes all of the sympathy she earned from the audience away. Jason, like Medea, also deserves the audience’s sympathies. Even though Jason did abandon Medea and did nothing to stop her and his sons from exile at first, he does not deserve what Medea does to him. Medea fools Jason into taking their sons with gifts from Medea, a golden crown and cloak, to his new wife, Creon’s daughter, Creusa. These gifts end up killing her and Creon: “Her face went white and [she] fell…then some ran after Jason, others ran to fetch Creon…she ran, she was like a torch, and the gold crown…streamed fire…the golden cloak was white-hot, flaying the flesh from living bones…then Creon …flung himself on her…[and] ran through him,…”(2.1.234-43). After Medea hears this and that Jason saw the whole thing she says to the boy, “You have told good news well: I’ll reward you” (2.1.251). At this point Medea has lost the readers compassion and Jason has obtained it because Medea killed his wife and friend; however, she does not stop there. Medea has gone so insane that she sees the final step in getting vengeance is to kill the only thing Jason has left, his sons: “So Jason will be able to...