The ending of “Medea” is often the subject of much controversy (Aristotle even uses the ending as an example of how playwrights should NOT end a play). Euripides concludes “Medea,” by employing a strategy known as “deus ex machina,” or “god from machine.” Essentially, this is a term that refers to critical points in the plot of a story being easily tied up with the invocation of a god. This technique is often looked down upon by many because it is simply deemed “too easy.” It often looks like lazy writing.
Euripides utilizes “deus ex machina” in Medea when Medea, after murdering the Princess of Corinth and her two children, flees Corinth via a chariot of Artemis. Though Medea briefly communicates with Jason after these murders and before she departs from Corinth, all she does is gloat over her killings and predicts Jason’s downfall. In other words, the abrupt ending provides readers with unsatisying answers to several questions they may have been asking themselves throughout the play, such as how Medea will reach Athens and flee Corinth after committing such a heinous crime on the royal family and what is in store for Jason after his family was just murdered. Although the ending does technically tie up the play, it does so in a cheap manner. Rather than receiving an ending that is on par with the level of drama in the rest of the play, readers are presented a conclusion that does little to satisfy their desire for an intense culmination.
Sources:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/titusadelani.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/medea-a-real-ending/amp/
https://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_euripides_medea.html
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I agree with you Bennett. He could have made the ending so much better. In my opinion, Medea should not have been left off of the hook like that. I wanted to see her have to pay in some sort of way for her crimes and have something happen to her. I get that much of the violence she commits is from all the oppression from men she has received, but she still is crazy and an immoral person that deserves punishment for her actions. I wish someone could rewrite an ending to the story and change some aspects of the plot. I think not allowing Medea to get away with so much in the end will make things less unsettling and make people more likely to enjoy the ending of the story.
I agree with your assessment of the ending of Medea. According to the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, the ending should provide catharsis, but I felt no purging of my emotions at the conclusion of the play. Medea achieves her evil goals by poisoning her husband’s mistress and her father and even killing her own children.
However, I do believe Euripides was limited by the pre-established story of Medea. Greek playwrights often rewrote or embellished myths their audiences were already familiar with. In Greek mythology, it was known that Medea killed her children, left her husband Jason, and escaped to Athens. (Surprise—she married Aegeus and was later expelled from Athens because of her conspiracy to kill Aegeus’s son, Theseus.) If Euripides decided to follow the original story of Medea, it was almost impossible for him to create a sense of catharsis with his ending. Medea gets away with it—there’s no escaping that fact. While using familiar myths allowed playwrights to spin the stories in their own way, Medea is a perfect example of the limitations of using stories that were already written out.
If I was to write an ending to the story, I would use the oath Aegius makes with Adea as the base. I would have Media escape from Corinth and head to Athens. Once the Corinthians found out she was at Athens they would begin to seek her back from Athens in order to punish her for the murder of the royal family. Aegius would have two options: 1. he could give up Media and keep peace within the city-states with the risk of godly punishment, or 2. he could keep his God-fearing ways and keep Media in Athens, this act would, in turn, most likely create a war between Athens and Corinth which could create a very interesting plot and potentially bloody ending that would provide more of a traditional tragic ending.
I want to start off by saying I absolutely agree that this ending was abrupt and doesn't fit in with the Aristotelian definition of catharsis, but I would like to offer up some possibilities of why this badly written ending may be. As mentioned in the beginning our discussion of Medea in class, Medea as a play is akin Hamlet. This is because they are revenge tragedies, and they don't follow all of the rules of tragedies as set out by Aristotle. This might explain why there is no catharsis at the end. It is also important to note that Euripides was known to be more eccentric in his playwriting, and he was disliked by the majority of his audience for the confrontational and shocking manner of his plays. He was more prone to experimentation than other playwriters such as Sophocles, and was more comfortable with bending the rules. I feel like the ending was one of his experimentations that didn't come out quite right, but could be much better with some tweaks. One of the things Euripides did was point out societal faults, and having such a violent and tragic ending would really drive the point home to the audience and stay in their memory. Its an ending they aren't expecting, no one wins and there is only sadness and despair, but no catharsis. It illustrates the point that the oppression of women in Greek society will always lead to a lose-lose situation in the most horrible way. Then there is also the fact that there may be more to the myth that the audience would know, and hence there might be some sort of aftermath that they know about and Euripides didn't feel that it had to be shown, though this is a cheap way out. Considering all this though, not going to lie, I did laugh for a good minute when the dragon chariot came out of no where and poses a truly profound question: why didn't Medea just kill everyone with dragons?
I think that Medea is one of the first examples in history in which the writer uses a strategy that every tv or movie series uses at some point. Countless episodes or movies end when so much is left to be decided in order to create an equally entertaining sequel and cause the audience to demand one because they want a fulfilling ending. I’m sure that all of us can think of at least one episode or movie (El Internado comes to mind for me) that ends with so much to be determined. Instead of criticizing the director for lazy producing, most people (usually) looked forward to the sequel or next episode. Unfortunately, there is no sequel to Medea (as far as I know) meaning that it is up to the readers to infer and answer their own questions. If that is not good enough, then you can follow a similar path to John Gardner who added to Beowulf, written at least a thousands years ago, by writing Grendel only fifty years ago.
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