Deception And Deception In Helen

In the play Helen by Euripides the main character, Helen often finds herself in complicated situations. To get out of those situations, Helen believes that her only option is to manipulate, deceive, and lie to people. Helen’s main goal is to be reunited with her husband, Menelaos, in her homeland. Helen persuades characters to do things her way by manipulation, lies, and deception. Throughout Helen, the main character manipulates Teucros, Menelaos, and Theoclymenos using deception, persuasion, and deceit which derive from her use of rhetoric. Helen manipulates these men to achieve her end goal of being reunited with her husband Menelaos.
Helen’s manipulation begins when she meets Teucros, a Greek that has a burning hatred for Helen because …show more content…
When the two are reunited, she’s aware that they don’t have the time or opportunity to be reunited in their homeland unless they come up with a scheme to deceive Theoclymenos. Helen persuades Menelaos into going along with her plan to lie to Theoclymenos and tell him that Menelaos has died, and she must give him a proper burial. Menelaos is very hesitant at first to take orders from a woman, but Helen persuades him to go along with the plan. She does this by coming up with all of the solutions to the loopholes that he finds, but in the end, giving him all the credit and saying that he makes all of the …show more content…
In Medea, which came before Helen, the main character, Medea, is a woman that deceives people. Medea and Helen’s characters are both designed to come across as deceitful. However, Medea takes a step further and everyone in the world fears her because she’s a witch. This is also perpetuated by the uses of deus ex machina which means god out of the machine. It is used as a literary device to portray the abrupt solution of a seemingly unsolvable problem which can be used to shock the audience. Both women manipulate people that they care about, and both do it out of love. However, Medea is fueled by rage as a result of her crumbling love. Helen is fueled by love and is attempting to save her love by crumbling another’s love for her. Medea goes so far as to kill her children and her ex-husband’s new wife. Helen just manipulates people into believing her schemes that allow her to sail back home. All of the being said, one could argue that Euripides has changed the way that he portrays women in his plays. Both women are deceiving people and trying to get their way, but the way they are portrayed is completely different. Medea is portrayed as a know it all, and at one point she herself states that she is clever but tries to downplay it by saying that she’s not too clever. Meanwhile, Helen never brags about herself and often says negative things about herself. Helen blames herself for the war, and even after coming up with the entire plan to