Saturday, October 4, 2014

Medea and Dido Comparison

In class, I discussed how Medea and Dido individually handled their heartbreak. Medea was a combination of angry and sad, which lead her to make the decisions she did. To recap, she killed her children, Kreon and his daughter. Yeah, pretty drastic decisions. Dido, on the other hand, was more sad than angry. She was disappointed in herself for going against her word of staying true to Sychaeus. In addition, she was furious at Aeneas for breaking his promise. This lead her to commit suicide, leaving Anna by herself. I think it's nice to compare the women we have seen in literature. Jocasta and Dido both committed suicide out of grief, and, well Medea was just CRAZY (see photo). I can't wait to see what we read in the future and how the women react to situations.





3 comments:

Unknown said...

I think that your comparison on the different emotions that Dido and Medea experienced after the unfair treatment they endured makes a lot of on how they reacted as a result of their emotions. Since Dido felt more sadness than actual anger, these emotions resulted in suicide. Contrastingly, Medea's anger does not lead to suicide because she doesn't have such a strong sense of despair as Dido does. I think an important factor to notice when comparing these two women is that Medea had a much stronger urge for revenge than Dido did. As you mentioned, Bonnie, this then leads to Medea murdering others.This desire for revenge can be noted when Medea says "Now, friends, has come the time of my triumph over My enemies, and now my foot is on the road" right before stating her plan of action (lines 749-750). Her act of killing others not only stems from her anger, but specifically and importantly because of the revenge she feels. Dido on the other hand responds with suicide because of her greater despair and greater disappointment with herself, as you mentioned.

Unknown said...

I also think it's interesting how neither one of the women ever thought to harm the man. Medea kills people around her (ex?)husband to try and hurt him and Dido kills herself which leads to Aeneus feeling super guilty. I wonder why neither of them just took the direct route and killed the guy.

Sri Korrapati said...

Well, I don't condone killing anyone over relationships, even if Jason did deserve it. I think it's really interesting that Medea is an outcast from society because she's a strong, powerful foreign woman while Dido is popular, strong, powerful, and foreign women. I think Medea is more powerful than Dido, but Dido might be more level headed. I think Dido took all her frustration out on herself while Medea took it out on those around her. I think the key difference however is the men themselves. Jason is definitely a terrible dude, but Aeneus was doing his duty to find Rome.