Revenge In Medea Filicide
According to the rules nature, a mother is to nurture her offspring and do utterly almost anything to protect it from danger. In some cases, however, this does not apply. For the sake of greed, revenge, or hatred, some mothers have gone to the extremes to kill their children. This action is known as filicide. This act exists today but has long existed since ancient times. It is seen in early texts such as Euripides’s Medea, where a crazed Medea kills her children in order to attain revenge on her cheating husband. This tale parallels real life tragedies such as the story that waved national news in 1997 when Susan Eubanks killed her four children to gain vengeance towards the men in her life. Although hundreds of years separate these two stories,
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Medea had escaped from her hometown, destroyed all connections to her family, and went as far as to kill her own brother for her husband Jason. After several years of marriage, being a good wife, and having two children, Jason left her for the princess of Corinth who was more beautiful and younger. Jason’s greed built the rage and the desire of vengeance within Medea who was a bomb waiting to explode. Fast forward to the year 1997 in San Marcos, CA after a night spent drinking and popping painkillers, a fight between Susan Eubanks and her boyfriend Rene Dodson erupted. Tires were slashed, the car destroyed, and the police had to be called. Dodson ended up taking away his belongings and leaving Eubanks that night. Susan Eubanks had been “betrayed” by all the men in her life and to her that was the last time someone would leave her.
“He will never see the sons he had by me alive again--- nor will he see children from his new bride. He’ll just see her: writhing and dying from my poisons. Let no man say of Medea that she is mild as milk; I am not like other women: I am of some other kind” (Euripides
Medea had escaped from her hometown, destroyed all connections to her family, and went as far as to kill her own brother for her husband Jason. After several years of marriage, being a good wife, and having two children, Jason left her for the princess of Corinth who was more beautiful and younger. Jason’s greed built the rage and the desire of vengeance within Medea who was a bomb waiting to explode. Fast forward to the year 1997 in San Marcos, CA after a night spent drinking and popping painkillers, a fight between Susan Eubanks and her boyfriend Rene Dodson erupted. Tires were slashed, the car destroyed, and the police had to be called. Dodson ended up taking away his belongings and leaving Eubanks that night. Susan Eubanks had been “betrayed” by all the men in her life and to her that was the last time someone would leave her.
“He will never see the sons he had by me alive again--- nor will he see children from his new bride. He’ll just see her: writhing and dying from my poisons. Let no man say of Medea that she is mild as milk; I am not like other women: I am of some other kind” (Euripides