Representation of Society in Euripides Medea Essay

Representation of Society in Euripides Medea During the time of Euripides, approximately the second half of the fifth century B.C., it was a period of immense cultural crisis and political convulsion (Arrowsmith 350). Euripides, like many other of his contemporaries, used the whole machinery of the theater as a way of thinking about their world (Arrowsmith 349). His interest in particular was the analysis of culture and relationship between culture and the individual. Euripides used his characters as a function to shape the ideas of the play (Arrowsmith 359). In Medea, there was not a traditional hero, but a fragmentation between the two paired major characters, which is characteristic of Euripides work (Arrowsmith 356). Jason†¦show more content†¦Euripides was interested in how culture affected things. He was not the typical writer and his characters confirm this. In Medea, Euripides wanted his characters to participate in a culture that was under extreme stress, perhaps the same stress that his culture was experiencing. He exhibited this by writing as if his characters were transplanted into a different culture, unique from their own, as if to use the unfamiliarity as psychological strain. Therefore the strain would immortalize or distort them. The way in which Medea meditates the murder of her children is much admired, however Euripides interest is in the collapse or derangement of culture that makes the murder both possible and necessary (Arrowsmith 357). Euripides sends the message through his characters that human character is altered by suffering. During the pressures of war when humans are subject to harsh necessity, human nature has a new range of behaviors, chaotic and uncontrollable. Behind Jason and Medea Euripides wanted the audience to see that the spreading of expedience and revenge, when unchecked by culture or religion, would bring about the Peloponnesian War (Arrowsmith 361). Superficially, Medea is a critique of relations between men and women, the struggle between Jason and Medea; then the struggle between Creon and Medea. However at the deeper level, Medea is a critique of the quality and state of the contemporary culture of Euripides (Arrowsmith 361). The unique symbolism is thatShow MoreRelatedAn Analysis of the Play Medea by Euripides1410 Words   |  6 Pagesnotion of the ideal man presented in the play Medea, by Euripides, is an exceptionally important one in the context of 5th Century Athens, a culture based very much upon the importance of the man both in his household and the general society. 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