Although, both Death of a Salesman and Medea were both considered tragedies by convention, these two plays left me with very different sets of emotions after reading them. When I read Death of a Salesman I was sad when Willy ultimately took his own life. I disagreed with many of his decisions and recognized his flaws, but, in the end, I was able to sympathize with Willy. Conversely, Medea’s character, although treated badly by Jason and stranded far away from her home took actions that are unforgivable, even in the sense of a reader-character dynamic. The hatefulness, which seemed to resonate from Medea made the play hard to read and my lack of empathy for the main character left me extremely unsettled upon completing the play.
In effect, Medea seems to have no real protagonist; Jason breaks Medea’s heart, so Medea commits murder and infanticide to break his, but no one is able to take responsibility or show remorse for their actions. Instead of conveying sadness, Medea highlights disturbing and selfish aspects of human nature. And although what Madea does is not typical of what most of us would consider human nature, perhaps Euripides hoped it would demonstrate the willingness of those who feel they have been wrong to defy the conventions of moral behavior in search of revenge.
I agree that from our modern viewpoint, Medea's acts seem completely unreasonable and unforgivable. At the same time, however, we have to consider time periods at which these works were written. One could argue that the act of suicide is just as unforgivable as infanticide. Medea's actions (though VERY extreme) showed a controvertial strong woman in the male ruled ancient Greece. I cannot reconcile her killing of her own children, but I do appreciate the fact that she is a rare case of a woman who is willing to stand up to a man who has done her wrong. To me, the biggest tragedy of the play is that Medea felt that there was no other way to attain revenge on Jason.
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