Medea Love Quotes

It's important to remember that the root of all Medea's anger is love. She fell for Jason hard back in their Golden Fleece days. This deep affection is the fuel for her almost inhuman need for revenge.

The Tutor here expresses a pretty cynical view of love. The play seems to back this theory of humanity. Everyone from Jason to Medea act only with themselves in mind.

Love is often depicted as a force of destruction in Euripides's plays. Frequently his characters' passion is the cause of their undoing. Hippolytus is another play where this occurs. In that piece Phaedra falls in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, and tragedy ensues.

Here again we see love depicted as the seed for the worst kind of hatred. Jason and Medea's venom for each other is so intense, because their love was just as passionate.

This seems like a pretty flimsy argument to us. Why does the fact that Medea helped Jason out of love negate the fact that she helped him? What does Jason think would be a better motivation for Medea's assistance? Power? Personal gain? Jason, it seems like you're just digging yourself a deeper hole.

Here again we have a very cynical view of love. The Chorus seems to be saying a healthy relationship is impossible. From the perspective of the play all love inevitably leads to tragedy.

This is one of the few places in the play where we see that Medea is capable of real maternal love. This sweet moment is goes a long way towards humanizing Medea. It shows that even though she is capable monstrous actions, she is also capable of gentle affection.

The Messenger relates to us one of the most touching (and grotesque) scenes in the play. Creon shows true paternal love when he discovers his daughter's body. He's so overcome with emotion he doesn't stop to think that maybe it's a bad idea to throw yourself onto a flaming corpse. Once again in the play we see love as a destroyer.

Medea's intention to honor her dead sons seems to show that her maternal love is still intact somewhere inside her. Of course, a couple questions come to mind. 1) Wouldn't it have been a greater honor not kill them in the first place? 2) How is Medea going to start a festival in Corinth, when she can never go back there again?

In the end, Medea sacrifices her love for the sake of revenge. Unlike most tragic protagonists she seems to feel all right with her decisions. Once again this seems to support the view that the play has a very cynical view of love. Medea is a lot happier and self satisfied now that she's completely destroyed all traces of it from her life.