Medea prompt help!!

[g2gsofast]

Hey guys,
So my teacher gave us a practice prompt as prep for our upcoming Medea SAC, and I am really struggling to come up with paragraphs and examples for the prompt. English is really not my strongest suit and I am freaking out because it is such an important subject that I need to do well in.
Here is the prompt: "the real tragedy in medea is that none of the characters is capable of changing their attitudes or behaviour in order to resolve conflict".
My teacher gave the class an idea of what paragraphs we should have where she said it should be:
para 1: Medea - excessive pride and passion
para 2: Jason: insensitive, lack of sympathy
para 3: Creon: gullible
Although i can see how these paragraphs can work, I really don't like them and was wondering if anyone has any better suggestions for the paragraphs.
Also,
- Do you guys think there should be more than just three paragraphs and that I could possibly cut up the first paragraph about medea and make it into two., where one para is about Medea's passion taking over her reason and logic (lack of moderation) and the other para being: Medea's pride is her hamartia.
- With the paragraphs, I have always thought that we should never fully agree with the prompt, but my teacher said that it would be unwise to do that with this given prompt and that sometimes we are allowed to fully agree with the prompt. - do you agree?
- What themes should I talk about?

I will be truly grateful if anyone could help me in anyway!! I've been staring at the prompt for the past 30 minutes and crying because I REALLY WANT TO IMPRESS MY TEACHER AND DO WELL IN THIS SUBJECT.

Thanks guys!!

[Poet]

-snip-

Hey, g2gsofast,

You sound really stressed about this. I just wanted to say remember to breathe, okay? If you've been crying over this prompt, you're probably so stressed you're not thinking clearly. So before you start, I want you to take a step back and close your eyes, take a couple deep breaths, maybe make yourself a tea or something then come and read this through and start from scratch.

Okay. So, your teacher gave you an idea for what the paragraphs should look like. That’s good. You have a set plan to base your writing off of. This is a SAC, right? So the best thing to do is follow exactly what your teacher wants you to do. In the exam, it may be different, but if your teacher wants you to write in full agreement, then do it.

The ideas seem pretty solid, but vague, which is a good thing because you can take these as general themes and run with it. Try and find related quotes to the themes/characteristics you’re writing on, and plan on examples you can find (e.g. When Medea assumes a posture of helplessness in front of Creon/Aegeus to persuade them, then changes her posture entirely after they leave, hence appealing to their sense of power which blinds them to the risks of giving Medea what she wants – separate circumstances, similar outcome).

As to your first question, this depends on the amount of time you have and how much writing you feel comfortable doing. You can definitely fit a much more intense, deep discussion of the play into 4 paragraphs instead of 3, but that depends on how much you feel personally able in doing.

You decide whether you want to fully agree with the prompt, but to me if it’s what your teacher wants, you should do the full agreement.

The themes of lust, passion, marriage, power, gender roles in Ancient Greece all came to mind straight away. Medea has a ridiculous amount of themes embedded throughout, so just choose the ones you feel fit in best with the particular paragraph prompts your teacher gave you, and go for it.

Oh, and one more thing: it doesn’t matter if you think English isn’t your ‘strong suit’ – if you work hard enough, and believe you can do it, you will.

[g2gsofast]

Hey, thank you for your reply, I think I really needed someone to tell me to take a step back and chill out for a second, so thank you!! I have always been a really anxious person who catastrophises situations to the point where I believe I'm gonna fail something before I even try it, which I really need to work on fixing, cause I don't think my can't handle having any more existential crises'.

With the themes part: I really wanted to include gender roles into one of my paragraphs but I'm a bit unsure about which paragraph I can incorporate it into. I'm thinking: that maybe it can be put into the paragraph about Jason because his prejudice against women and male superiority complex kinda prompts him to underestimate Medea, which ultimately is the cause of his downfall. What do you think? I'm not sure if it works.
Also, I like the idea of incorporating the theme of lust and marriage, because I think it'll help my piece stand out from the rest of the students, but I'm a bit unsure about what I can talk about in terms of those themes. If you have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it!!

just wanted to say this again: But seriously, thank you for your reply, everyone on this forum and the whole atarnotes community is so freaking amazing. <3
 

[OZLexico]

I think your essay could be more interesting than your teacher is suggesting.  For one thing, the main characters, Medea and Jason, can't change because there are the limitations of the myth story that the play is based on.  The audience know the story and the dramatist can't change it - so the conflict between Medea and Jason cannot be resolved.  If you wanted to follow this sort of discussion you'd have to mention the context of the play and aspects of the genre of Greek Tragedy.  Secondly, Euripides is really focused on the conflict between logic and passion.  The faith in logic was a bit of an obsession with the Athenians (characterised by Jason's pragmatic/insensitive position about his new relationship providing security for his sons) and they feared the forces of chaos and disorder.  Medea represents this barbarian passion.  However, things aren't that simple - Medea uses logic to plan her revenge on Jason and uses emotion to manipulate Creon.  You could include some discussion of gender roles here too.  Thirdly, it is the presentation of the minor characters where Euripides can exercise a bit of flexibility.  Examples of this are Creon and Aegeus.  Creon does change - he relents in his order for the exile of Medea - his attempt to "resolve conflict" (even though this leads to his destruction).  Aegeus uses what appears to be a carefully considered strategy but ultimately invites the forces of chaos in under the protection of Athens.  You should probably look carefully at that "modifier" in your essay topic - "the real tragedy" ... and think about how each of your main points is going to reflect these key terms.