"Medea" Notes--From Aiegeus to line 1094

Stop before the Messenger speaks.

1. Aigeus is the son of King ______________.
2. What does Aigeus want most in the world?
3. What does Medea offer to do?
4. What will Aigeus do for her in return?
5. What will Aigeus not do for her?
6. Now that her plan for a safe harbor has been made, what will Medea first do? How wills he treat her husband? Lines 758-763.
7. What will she ask Jason to do for their children?
8. What will Medea give to the bride? What will that gift do to Kreon's daughter?
9. What reasons does Medea give for "having to" kill her children?
10. What do you make of "For it is not bearable to be mocked by enemies" (781)?
11. Medea very rationally admits to her mistakes. Which ones?
12. Note this: "Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, / A stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite,/ One who can hurt my enemies and help my friends;/ For the lives of such persons are most remembered" (791-794).
Again, she is being cool and rational here. It's all about her fame and fortune. She will, by doing this, make herself immortal!
13. What does the Chorus advise just after she finishes that speech (794)?
14. How does Medea respond to this very rational advice?
15. What reason does Medea give for killing her children?
16. Ultimately, the Chorus thinks she will not be able to do it.
17. Note how Medea works on making Jason believe that she is like any other female: She begs him to forgive her, and admits to having a temper. "I have talked with myself about this and I have / Reproached myself. 'Fool' I said, 'why am I so mad? / Why am I set against those who have planned wisely?/ Why make myself an enemy of the authorities /And of my husband, who does the best thing for me/ By marrying royalty and having children who/ Will be as brothers to my own? What is wrong with me? /Let me give up anger, for the gods are kind to me. Have I not children, and do I not know that we / In exile from our country must be short of friends?' / When I considered this I was that I had shown/ Great lack of sense, and that my anger was foolish" (847-859).
18. Jason must be "as dumb as a stump," because he actually buys what she says in lines 860-880. What should clue Jason into the fact that she means harm?
19. Jason "approves" and even shows compassion: "It is natural/ For a woman to be wild with her husband when he / Goes in for secret love. But now your mind has turned / To better reasoning. In the end you have come to / The right decision, like the clever woman you are" (883-889). Medea starts to react emotionally. How? How does Jason react?
20. How does Medea respond? What is ironic about that particular response?
21. Note how Medea plays right into the ancient Greek male's beliefs and prejudices about women: "It is not that I distrust your words,/ But a woman is a frail thing, prone to crying" (903-904).
22. What does Medea tell Jason about how she feels about the fact that Kreon has banished her?
23. Medea follows up with a request for Jason and Medea's children. What does she request?
24. How will Jason accomplish this?
25. How does Jason react when Medea gets the children to bring int eh beautiful dress and diadem?
26. How does Medea talk Jason into allowing this to happen? What are her arguments?
27. What do you make of the Chorus' response? Why don't they do anything?
28. What news does the Tutor bring to Medea?
29. Note the Tutor's wise words: "Others before you have been parted from their children./ Mortals must bear in resignation their ill luck" (991-992).
30. Note Medea's speech after the tutor leaves:
"O children, O my children, you have a city, / You have a home, and you can leave me behind you,/ And without your mother you may live there for ever" (995-997). Do you think that she is jealous of her children? Might that be one of the things that motivates her to kill them? Or is she being compassionate?

31. "But I am going into exile to another land/ Before I have seen you happy and taken pleasure in you,/ Before I have dressed your brides and made your marriage beds / And held up the torch at the ceremony of wedding./ Oh, what a wretch I am in this my self-willed thought! / What was the purpose, children, for which I reared you?/ For all my travail and wearing myself away?/ They were sterile, those pains I had in the bearing of you./ O surely once the hopes in you I had, poor me, / Were high ones: you would look after me in old age,/ And when I died would deck me well with your own hands; / A thing which all would have done. O but now it is gone,/ That lovely thought. For, once I am left without you, / Sad will be the life I'll lead and sorrowful for me./ And you will never see your mother again with / Your dear eyes, gone to another mode of living. / Why, children, do you look upon me with your eyes? / Why do you smile so sweetly that last smile of all?/ Oh, Oh, what can I do? My spirit has gone from me,/ Friends, when I saw that bright look in the children's eyes. / I cannot bear to do it. I renounce my plans / I had before. I'll take my children away from /This land. Why should I hurt their father with the pain/ They feel, and suffer twice as much of pain myself?/ No, no, I will not do it. I renounce my plans./ Ah, what is wrong with me? Do I want to let go / My enemies unhurt and be laughed at for it? / I must face this thing. Oh, but what a weak woman/ Even to admit to my mind these soft arguments. / Children, go into the house. And he whom law forbids/ To stand in attendance at my sacrifices, /Let him see to it. I shall not mar my handiwork" (998-1029). Do you notice the degree of thought, consideration of consequences, and determination?
32. Medea then rationalizes something else about her children's fate. What is that?
33. Note what the chorus reveals about the "nature" of women:
"Often before / I have gone through more subtle reasons, / And have come upon questionings greater / Than a woman should strive to search out. / But we too have a goddess to help us/ And accompany us into wisdom. / Not all of us. Still you will find / Among many women a few, / And our sex is not without learning./ This I say, that those who have never/ Had children, who know nothing of it, / In happiness have the advantage / Over those who are parents. / The childless, who never discover / Whether children turn out as a good thing / Or as something to cause pain, are spared / Many troubles in lacking this knowledge./ And those who have in their homes/ The sweet presence of children, I see that their lives/ Are all wasted away by their worries./ First they must thing how to bring them up well and / How to leave them something to live on./ And then after this whether all their toil/ Is for those who will turn out good or bad, / Is still an unanswered question. /And of one more trouble, the last of all, /That is common to mortals I tell. / For suppose you have found them enough for their living, / Suppose that the children have grown into youth/ And have turned out good, still, if God so wills it, / Death will away with our children's bodies, / And carry them off into Hades. / What is our profit, then, that for the sake of / Children the gods should pile upon mortals/ After all else/ This most terrible grief of all? (1054-1089).

Week of October 26, 2009

Monday/Tuesday

Part I: Have your textbooks (Part I & II only). What we do will vary according to where we are in class. We will be reading some of "Medea." You will be expected to read more for homework (lines 646-1094 for odd classes; the point where we finish until line 1094 for even classes).

Wednesday/Thursday

Finish "Medea" in class. Brief discussion/seminar (graded). Expect an in-class essay test on Wednesday/Thursday, November 4/5. Though the prompt will not be revealed to you beforehand, and though the prompts may vary from class to class, each prompt will be designed for the student to answer it by focusing on one of three works: "Medea," "Agamemnon," or 1001 Nights. For example (and this will not be a prompt), I might ask you to look at female characters in one of these works and to analyze what that culture thought about women. As I said, this will not be a prompt, in part because it is way too broad.

Homework: Do vocabulary exercise #5.

Friday:

Check for vocabulary and go over.

Homework: Review "Medea," "Agamemnon," and 1001 Nights and any notes you might have taken for these works. You may not use notes or your text for the test.

Medea until Line 267

Questions for “Medea”

Background:

1. What is the name of the playwright?
2. During what years did he live?
3. In what year was “Medea” first produced?
4. Which war began that same year?
5. According to your book, Medea has an “iconoclastic” approach. What does that mean?
6. What are “established canons”?
7. What three characterizations of the title character stand out?
8. How does the play attack the audience’s deepest prejudices?
9. What does the play say about the dangers of oppression?
10. Who will give Medea refuge? Where?

Play (through line 267):

1. In this play, the chorus is made up of .

2. The nurse reveals details about Medea’s history, including the gruesome ones involving characters and places we have already discussed. Know them, including:

a. Argo

b. Symplegades

c. Pelias

3. What does the Nurse say about the value of Medea’s assistance to Jason?

4. How does Medea literally react to her husband’s desertion?

5. Who is the daughter of Kreon?

6. Whose name, according to the Nurse, does Medea cry out?

7. Does the nurse feel any sympathy for Medea? Explain. Give me a direct quote.

8. What else does the nurse feel about Medea? Give me a direct quote or two.

9. How has Medea been acting around her children?

10. Why does the Tutor call his mistress a “poor fool”?

11. What has the Tutor just overheard about Medea’s fate (70-71)?

12. What does the Tutor mean when he says, “Old ties give place to new ones”?

13. Who says the following: “Have you only just discovered / That everyone loves himself more than his neighbor? / Some have good reason, others get something out of it.”

14. Who is getting something out of it and what is that person getting?

15. Note what the Nurse says and how it echoes something in Agamemnon: “Great people’s tempers are terrible, always / Having their own way, seldom checked, / Dangerous they shift from mood to mood./ How much better to have been accustomed / To live on equal terms with one’s neighbors./ I would like to be safe and grow old in a / Humble way. What is moderate sounds best,/ Also in practice is best for everyone. / Greatness brings no profit to people./ God indeed, when in anger, brings / Greater ruin to great men’s houses” (118-129). How can this philosophy be applied to Agamemnon?

16. What advice does the Chorus give to the grieving Medea?

17. For what does Medea pray (p.439)?

18. Who says the following, and what is ironic about the words: “Such a look she will flash on her servants/ If any comes near with a message,/ Like a lioness guarding her cubs.”

19. Who is the god of oaths? What does this have to do with Medea?

20. Pay close attention to Medea’s speech to the chorus. I want you to react to it in class—lines 211-264.

Week of October 19, 2009

Monday/Tuesday

Remember that you are to have your Norton Anthologies (vols. 1 & 2) on block days until otherwise notified.

Vocabulary test. Once you have proofed it, written and signed the pledge, then begin working on "Medea." Read pp. 433-441 (stopping before Kreon speaks on line 269). Expect an evaluation on the reading on Wednesday/Thursday. Also, remember to bring your vocabulary books on Wednesday/Thursday.

For periods 1, 3, & 5, turn in your grammar exercises from last week.

Homework: Finish reading the assigned pages of "Medea" unless you have already done so.

Wednesday/Thursday:

Evaluation of "Medea" reading. Go over. We will assign parts and read more of "Medea"--from lines 269 -645. We will then break into small groups to discuss the information and suspicions that seem to be "out there," but not obvious to the two important men in the play--Jason or Creon.

Go over chapter four of vocabulary. That will be due at the beginning of class on Friday.

Friday: Check for vocabulary homework. Go over. Wrap up this week's work.

Week of October 12, 2009

First, remember that the vocabulary test (units 1-3 plus classical roots) has been moved to Monday/Tuesday, October 19/20.

Monday/Tuesday:

Bring your Norton Anthologies. We will read the background of Ovid (683-684). You will then read Ovid’s story of Creation (684-686) and The Four Ages (686-687). Answer the following questions:

1. When did Ovid live?
2. What happened to Ovid in A.D. 8?
3. How many books are in Metamorphoses?
4. What existed before the earth?
5. What is the aether?
6. List each of the four ages and what characterized each age.

Next, from Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, read “The Quest for the Golden Fleece.” Answer these questions:

1. Who was Athamas?
2. Who was Nephele? Why was she afraid for the life of her son?
3. Who was Ino? What is the name of her father? What was his title?
4. Who was Phrixus?
5. How does Ino trick Athamas to murder his own son?
6. What happened instead of a sacrifice?
7. Who was Helle? What happened to her?
8. What happened to the boy?
9. What were the Colchians like?
10. Who was Aetes?
11. What happened to the ram?
12. What was so special about that ram—in terms of its appearance?
13. What was Pelias?
14. Why might Jason hold a grudge against Pelias?
15. Of what must Pelias be afraid?
16. Why is Pelias afraid when he sees Jason?
17. How does Pelias answer Jason’s demand to give up the throne?
18. What must Jason first do in order to reclaim his throne?
19. What was the name of Jason’s ship?
20. What had the women of Lemnos done?
21. Who was Hypsipyle? What had she done with her father?
22. Who was Hylas? What distracted him? What eventually happened to him?
23. Who were the Harpies?
24. What are the Symplegades? How do the Argonauts escape?
25. What is the name of the country of the Golden Fleece?
26. Which two goddesses decided to employ Cupid? What is Cupid to do?
27. How does King Aetes feel about foreigners?
28. What other trial does Aetes put Jason through?
29. How does Medea help Jason and his men survive this trial?
30. What does Medea beg the Argonauts to do?
31. What does Jason promise Medea?
32. Who is Apsyrtus?
33. What does Medea do to him? Why?
34. How did the Argonauts survive Scylla and Charybdis? What are Scylla and Charybdis?
35. What happened on Crete?
36. While Jason has been away, what has happened to Jason’s father and mother?
37. How does Medea bring about the death of Pelias?
38. What other gifts did Medea possibly give to Jason?
39. Jason and Medea had how many children?
40. What does Jason do to anger Medea?
41. What does Jason say to “add insult to injury” to what he is about to do to Medea?
42. How does the story end?

Each student should be ready to answer any of these questions, complete with page numbers (if necessary) by the beginning of the next class (Thursday or Friday).

Bring your grammar books and workbooks on Thursday/Friday.

Thursday/Friday:

Question and answer session on the assigned reading (graded). All students are responsible for all the information about these stories.

Make sure you have your Hacker's Rules for Writers books and workbooks. Turn to page 138 and begin reading 18: Find the exact words. Read 18a, 18b, and 18c. Do exercise 18-1 in your book. Do exercises 18-1, 18-2, and 18-3 in your workbook (pp. 41-43).

Homework: Study for your vocabulary test. It will be on Monday/Tuesday, October 19/20.

Week of October 4, 2009

Monday/Tuesday

Students will receive a hand-out on Azar Nafisi's brief interpretation on the women of 1001 Nights. We will discuss it. I want you to use it to hone your presentations.

Consider the following:
1. What are the three types of women in A Thousand and One Nights?
2. How is the king being unreasonable?
3. Why is the silence of the other maidens significant?
4. How does Sheherazade break the cycle of violence? What does she use (as opposed to what the king uses)?

As I was assisting various groups in their interpretation of one of the stories, I also suggested that they look at some of the passages in your Anthology's excerpts from the Koran. The most pertinent chapters are "Women" (871-874), "The Merciful" (884-886) and "Man" (887-888). Because Shahrazad is well-versed in the text of her faith, I want you to consciously incorporate the philosophy somewhere in your presentation. You don't need to insert passages word-for-word, though you could briefly and I do mean briefly.

Because I want these performances to be aimed at an audience of young children, you could do it by illustrating the principals found in your stories, by emphasis in your story. You might even ask the audience what they have learned at the end of the presentation.

Shahrazad will eventually teach her husband about wisdom, mercy, love, and forgiveness and she will do it by telling stories. She will bring out her husband's essential goodness. The three old men within the stories also reveal truths about their faith. For example, those who transgress are given other chances, but those that do not learn eventually meet Justice--a fate that they have chosen by their continued bad behavior. The last story reveals another principle of the Koran, one similar to Judeo-Christian texts (particularly the story of "The First Murder") about our roles as "our brothers' keepers."

We will spend the remainder of class revising, practicing or "dress rehearsing" the stories that will be presented on Thursday/Friday (because of PSATs and activities).

In addition to all drafts and notes and brainstorming and research, I want students to include a separate sheet (typed--no exceptions) with the names of each student and his/her role in the whole process. Roles might include: director, actors, writing, editing, costuming, casting, set design, or props (including puppets).

I also want a (typed--again, no exceptions, though it may be on the same page as the list of names and roles) brief statement about what your group has discovered about your story and about the series of stories as a whole (limited to those included in your text, beginning with The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad [the one in your book or the one on the shared file] and ending with the last story).

Include statement about your process. Just answer the following questions:

1. Where did you begin?
2. Why did you start there and not elsewhere?
3. What shape did your presentation start to take?
4. If you made changes, why did you make those changes?
5. How do you feel about your final product? What did you do well? What could you have done better?

After you have performed on Wednesday/Thursday (and all performances will be recorded), you will turn in the following and in this order--from top to bottom:

1. Role(s) of each student with names (typed).
2. Statement about your story and it context in the series of stories (could be on the same page as the first). Must be typed.
3. Typed statement of process (again, could be on the same page as #1 and #2).
4. Final draft of screenplay (by the way, a screenplay has the title at the top. Beneath that, write the name of the author/authors. Beneath that, write: "Characters." List the characters (perhaps with identifying characteristics--like "Shahrazad's sister"). Beneath that, you should have the setting, which may include props. And then the play (complete with stage directions, and scene changes, if applicable). At the end, you should write: THE END.
   
5. Previous drafts and notes--beginning with the most recent on top to the first thing you did on the bottom.

Groups that do not have all of the above will lose 5 points per day (school day, not class day), so appoint responsible people to make sure that this is done. As I said in my syllabus, I do not take e-mailed work--as attachments or as e-mails. Because this is flu season, you might also assign keepers of the material to people who live near one of the members of the group or near school.

Wednesday/Thursday

Students will get fifteen minutes to arrange paperwork and acquire costumes and props. Performances will begin. Students will receive a form to critique their classmates' performances.

As usual, you should have your vocabulary books with you--in case there is time to begin work on the review unit. The review unit will be due on Friday. You can expect a vocabulary test next Thursday/Friday.

Friday

I will check your vocabulary homework. We will go over it. Remember that there is a test next Thursday/Friday (because of PSATs). Study for the test this weekend. I write my own tests. Expect sentences that relate to the literature we have studied so far this semester, including any short pieces like the assigned essays and poems.