Medea Seventh Episode & Envoi Summary

  • The boys are heard desperately shouting for their lives inside the house.
  • They go silent.
  • The Chorus members lament Medea's heinous actions, and tell a story of another woman who killed her own sons by jumping off a cliff with them in her arms.
  • Jason shows up. He's furious.
  • He asks the Chorus where Medea is. Not that it matters, though, he says, because there's nowhere she can hide after killing Creon and his daughter.
  • Jason says he's worried what Medea might do to their sons.
  • The Chorus agrees that he should be worried. They tell him to open the doors to the house.
  • Jason draws his sword and beats of the doors, trying to open them.
  • A great rumbling is heard.
  • Medea appears in the sky with the boys' corpses beside her.
  • She's in a chariot drawn by dragons. (Really, she is.)
  • Medea says her grandfather, the Sun, (yes, the actual Sun) gave her the dragon chariot to protect her from enemies.
  • Jason heaps curses on Medea.
  • He shouts that a Greek wife never would've been so cruel. He should've known better than to marry a foreigner.
  • Medea tells him he can say whatever he likes. She's won, by hurting him to the core.
  • Jason yells that she's hurt herself, too, by killing her own sons.
  • She retorts that it was worth it and tells Jason that the whole thing is his fault, because he married another woman.
  • Jason replies that her crime is far worse, and that he knows the children will live on in Medea's guilty mind.
  • Medea says, enough of you. I'm going to take off on my dragon chariot now.
  • Jason begs her to leave him the boys' bodies so that he can bury them.
  • Nope, says Medea, I'm going to place their bodies in a temple to Hera, where no one will violate the bodies.
  • Medea adds that she's going to start a festival in Corinth in honor of the boys.
  • She tells Jason that she's off to Athens now, where she'll find sanctuary.
  • Jason pleads to touch his children's flesh one last time.
  • Medea refuses.
  • Jason curses Medea a couple more times and cries that he wishes his children had never been born.
  • Medea flies away.

Envoi

  • The Chorus concludes the play by recognizing how unpredictable the will of the gods is.