418 Euripides
For example, Pauline hangs a dreamcatcher made
by Moses Pillager, a guardian of Ojibwe traditional
healing and religious practices, alongside a crucifix in
her room. And while crossing Lake Matchimanito
in a leaky canoe, Margaret prays to both Ojibwe
and Catholic figures: “She alternated... addressing
different Manitous along with the Blessed Virgin
and Her heart, the sacred bloody lump that the blue-
robed women held in the awful picture Margaret
kept nailed to the wall.” Thus, the setting of Tracks is
one where traditions overlap. Furthermore, at times
these complicated cultural scenes lead to conflict.
When Nanapush is attempting to heal Fleur, Pau-
line disrupts the traditional ceremony, explaining,
“I’m sent to prove Christ’s ways.” It is Margaret
who uses a stick to try to rid the group of Pauline’s
unwanted presence and worldview. The conflict of
traditions is evident and complicated in this scene
as well as in the novel itself.
David Allred
EURIPIDES Medea (431 b.c.)
There have been several versions of the myth of
Medea. Medea’s character, motivation and many
actions associated with her continuously evolved and
took many forms. In the lean economy of a Greek
tragedy, Medea acquires a sharper profile, a rigorous
motivation, and an intenser response to the events
of the play. Euripides thus transforms her into a
figure of tragic proportions. While Jason’s rejection
destroys her social and personal identity and leaves
her floundering for breath, she successfully wrests
charge of the context of her life and from then on
controls every event and action of the play.
The legendary Medea is a woman scorned. She
is determined to wreak vengeance for the wrong
done to her by her husband, Jason. She holds center
stage for the justness of her cause when she speaks
to “[w]omen of Corinth.” She had loved Jason,
become an instrument of his success, saved his life,
and betrayed her father and her home to help him
gain the golden fleece even at the cost of render-
ing herself a traitor to her country. She claims to
have been wronged, insulted, and betrayed, “her bed
dishonoured.” She curses the “evil power love has in
people’s lives” and regrets her “folly committed long
ago, when I / was ready to desert my father’s house,
won over / by eloquence from a Greek.” She blames
gods, her infatuation with Jason, and her own evil-
hearted machinations for her ruination. But her
anger is unappeasable, and her desire for revenge is
ultimately her undoing.
The playwright, Euripides (ca. 484–406 b.c.),
denounces Medea’s unnatural actions. The chorus
calls her “Bloody handed fiend of vengeance,” and
Jason equates her with “hatred and murder”—“no
woman, but a tiger; a Tuscan Scylla,—but more
savage.” Yet Euripides imposes on the character of
Medea a degree of coherence and credibility. He
considers her anguish human, even when he consid-
ers her actions unnatural. His primary interest in
the play is to focus on evil in humans. He perceives
an inescapable conflict between claims of the fragile
high Grecian ideals of control, order, and mod-
eration on the one hand and uncontrollable human
passions on the other. Euripides’ interest in Medea’s
status as woman in an essentially patriarchal society
and her status as an alien in Greek society have led
to Medea being read as a proto-feminist as well as
postcolonial text.
Gulshan TanejaabandOnment in Medea
Euripides is widely regarded as a realist in that,
though he deals with mythological characters, some
of whom have familial ties to the gods (Medea her-
self is the granddaughter of Helius), his plays revolve
around human conflict and a virtuous representation
of emotional response. So it is with the tragedian’s
treatment of the theme of abandonment, which
drives the plot of Medea. The play’s original Athe-
nian audience would have already known the back
story and would thus have understood that, long
before the action of Euripides’ work, Medea and her
husband, Jason, abandoned their homelands before
arriving in Corinth, the play’s setting. Each has been
displaced following Medea’s acts of familial murder.
Each murder was motivated by the deep love Medea
felt for Jason. Far from being a given circumstance of
the tragedy, loss of one’s homeland is a woe actively
lamented by the Chorus of Corinthian Women.
Medea has willingly abandoned her homeland and
her sense of familial loyalty. She reminds Jason of