Medea As A Tragic Hero

Throughout history, women have struggled to obtain equality to men; most societies have been male-dominant. This trait has influenced well-known writers such as Euripides of the 5th century B.C.E., William Shakespeare of the 16th century, and Arthur Miller of the 20th century. It is evident in their writings of the tragic plays: Medea, Macbeth, and Death of a Salesman, respectively. The ultimate tragic heroes of these plays, Jason, Macbeth, and Willy, correspondingly, are unable to accept the realities of their life because of their fixed views on how it should be, this brings them to their inevitable downfall; as well as taking their partner down with them in the process. Although Medea is the main character of the play and possesses some traits of a tragic hero, Jason is the true one. Jason embodies the characteristics of being of noble background, having a fatal flaw, and he evokes the emotions of pity and fear in the audience. Euripides’s playwright is geared towards men of the time, it showed them what could happen when involved with a woman to an extreme. After the children are murdered by Medea, Jason does not even get to properly bury them, instead it is a mystery what really happens to their bodies. This brings out pity for Jason, for he has lost everything because the woman took …show more content…
They either sought out to have wealth, power, or to be accepted; qualities of life that millions of people thrive for throughout centuries. Those people sometimes forget to stop looking at what they do not have and what they can have compared to others of the time, and focus on the positive aspects, such as their significant other. Since the beginning, great men and woman, to the noble to the everyday person, look towards what they perceive as a much have of the time period, and tragically lose their