Medea: The Monomythic Antihero Cycle Term Paper

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Medea does not so much get help from outside as she makes her own aid, supernaturally. She uses magic to prepare the poisonous dress. She also uses magic to foretell a cure for Aegeus, so as to procure his promise of shelter when all is done. The crossing of the threshold is accomplished as she manages to convince Jason to take her two children and their poisonous gift into the inner sanctum of his new home. That her own husband should serve as the threshold guardian begins to portray the subtle way in which what (up until now) might look like a monomyth is about to take a gruesome turn away from anything which might be conceived as heroic. So the children, and with them symbolically Medea herself, enter into the very belly of the whale where they will confront Jason and his new wife. The first phase of the hero myth has proceeded rather traditionally, perhaps, if with a strange focus as the hero has not yet precisely left the city, and is remaining instead to take revenge on all those who sent her forth. This "rejection of the quest," is a little out of hand, one might say, as it seems to have transformed into the quest itself. However, it is the second phase, not the first, that really highlights how this is an anti-monomyth with an anti-hero.

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In the second phase, Medea undergoes the trials of the road ad finally confronts those at the depth of her own private underworld; however, in doing so she seems to destroy all those that the traditional hero would venerate, and she takes back with her not a boon but a murder most foul. Medea experiences the road of trials in her mind as she imagines her children walking into the castle to give her murderous gifts to Jason's bride. Now she struggles with her own doubts and feelings of empathy towards her children. In this stage, she must overcome her impulses to do good and harden her heart so as to murder her own children when they return to her. "Jason['s]... insistence on crediting Eros for the fact that Medea saved his life lets his nemesis know that sensuality and desire are her own worst enemies, that she has them to blame for her humilation and defeat. Thanks to him, she is persuaded that her own life affirming impulses have caused her humiliation and defeat." (Corti, 41)

Here the irony strikes in full force. The road of trials is where most heroes must struggle against their inner death-impulses and learn to embrace.....

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