S2- Unit 1: The Wages of Justice-edit

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My hand has strengthened. Yet, my angry heart resists these urges. Release the children. Spare them from my wretchedness. In Athens they will bring me happiness. But it’s too late. By all of Hell’s vengeful demons I’ll not leave my sons for my enemies to ridicule. The children must die.

Medea has no qualms about killing Creon, Jason, and Jason’s wife; in fact, she revels in the idea of them suffering for how Jason has wronged her. However, when facing the decision to kill her children, she falters. Even though it’s just for a second, it shows that the reason she has for killing them is not just to punish Jason in another way, but because she truly wants the best for them. Her killing them is a release from a much more painful death that they would face as a punishment for her actions. Every sentence, Medea’s decision of what to do to her children changes until she finally settles on her original plan and states, “The children must die”(Medea 1037-38). This alternating pattern of lines serves to further give us insight into how conflicted Medea is in this situation. Medea killing her children instead of leaving them to be raised in a foreign land is her giving them the freedom she herself lost when she left with Jason. She lost her homeland when she killed her brother while helping Jason get the Golden Fleece, forcing her to leave all her family behind. Medea does not want her children to have to leave the only home they have ever known as a result of her actions, as she knows how much the same thing hurt her. So she kills them so she does not have to suffer in the same way she did.