Carr’s By the Bog of Cats and Euripides’ Medea

Carr’s “By the Bog of Cats” and Euripides’ Medea are both considered powerful plays and theatrical pieces in their own rights and share various common textual as well as thematic elements. The pieces above play a critical part in not only responding to but also reflecting upon social and cultural upheaval. On the same note, they articulate different challenges that women of power experience in a male dominated society.

Euripides and Carr share a common when handling performance space. Although they many similarities, both pieces present different perspectives based on their characters, themes, and myth concepts. People need to understand the available similarities and differences of Carr’s By the Bog of cats and Euripides’s Medea in terms of their themes, characters, and the way they are influenced by myth and fate concepts.

Both the Bog of Cats and Medea presents a form of cultural instruction that offers an emotional outlet. To begin with Medea responds to the social transformations that occurred in Greece Athens. In particular the old belief in the sanctity of the state concentrated on faltering and faith in old theatrical heroes waning. On the same note, Carr wrote By the Bog of Cats during the time of social change in Ireland upheaval. (Jassim 448) Both novels were written during the period of political and religious violence and riots, which led to a dangerous fractured world, Notably, Car’s piece is a dark play for a darkly transforming globe.

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Both By the Bog of Cats and Medea play a critical role in addressing the fight of powerful women in the political realm who were both betrayed by their husbands. Both plays address the concept of women discrimination in powerful positions, which are perceived to belong to men. In both plays the women fight for their rights and what they believe belongs to them. For e.g. in “Medea” the character Medea is regarded as a sorceress as well as the wife to the hero Jason.

Specifically, when her husband opts to marry another person, she decides to kill her children who were from and her husband’s new lover for revenge to hurt her husband. Similarly, in the Bog of Cats the character Hester was determined to get her husband to come back to her. This is seen when she says, “Carthage Kilbride is mine for always or until I say he is no longer mine. I’m the one who chooses and discards, not him, and certainly not any of yees.” In simple terms both plays cover the idea of women who were both betrayed by their husbands and were willing to fight back for what belongs to them and not to let their husbands get away with betraying them.

Both plays also present women characters who suffers from daemonic passion as well as self-destruction tendencies because of a male-dominated system. Also, the plays present female characters with a radical aspect who are emotionally unstable as well as exaggerated to be hyper-feminine instead of conventionally feminine. Women portrayed in these pieces are always sexually driven and dark, features that generalize all female. (Schrottner.) On the other hand, females’ unpredictable characteristics, frivolity, not forgetting vulnerability, become stereotypically connected with them; thus, suitable for establishing tragic situations.

The fundamental difference between the By the Bog of Cats and Medea is the way the female characters goes about to get revenge on their husbands. Hester Swane’s reaction to betrayal of her husband was setting afire to her husband Carthage and his wife’s home as well as the killing of her daughter Josie. Conversely Medea kills her two children, her husband’s lover and her husband’s lover father.

The setting of both plays is also another deviation between the two of them. Whereby the bog of cats is set in the bogs of Ireland Medea is set in Ancient Greek. Moreover, the themes of disposition and displacement differentiate Medea and By the Bog of Cats, which makes the later play distinct from Euripides adaptation (Schtottner). Nevertheless, increased emotions in the two stories present existential themes of hate, hope, revenge, love, despair, and grief, which justify the comparison of the two pieces.

Carr uses the ancient Greek tragedy Medea by Euripides as an inspiration for her By the Bog of Cats play. She uses Medea as a temporal framework for her play. For e.g. like Medea, Hester is considered an outsider in her society. In the Bog of Cats Hester is described as a traveler, while in Medea, the character Medea is regarded as a foreigner, refugee, or an exile. Also, in a way Hester resembles Medea because she possesses witch like powers like Medea.

For e.g. she sees ghosts while the other people in her community cannot. Additionally, Hester implicates Carthage in the murder of her brother in the same way Medea implicates Jason for the death of her brother also. However, Medea and Hester are different in the fact that the former escapes the consequences of her doings in a chariot while Hester dies. Hester’s equivalent of the Medea’s chariot is Hester’s caravan. (O’Brien). It is noteworthy that the designation of Hester as a traveler is ironic. Despite the fact that she understands the path and surroundings bog hole, she comes back to the destination from where she watched her mother walked away from her.

Another deviation between the Hester and Medea is that the former murders her two sons out of revenge against their father while Hester kills her daughter out of love for daughter for protection instead of having someone else her. Additionally, Hester is different from Medea in the way she handles the betrayal and how she sees her husband’s new lover. For e.g. when Jason marries Glauce, Medea sends the bride a poisoned gown a s well as coronet that kills the bride and her father.

However, Hester describes Caroline as little china bit of woman whom she can break as w wine glass or toy cup (Choi). However, Hester does not hurt the girl because she has pity for her and sees her as a young child which is ironic because she ends up killing her own daughter which is younger than her husband’s new bride. Also Medea displays a Greek honor with heroic language and uses a local dialect while Hester uses an Irish dialect.

Overall “By the Bog of Cats” and Medea are considered powerful plays and theatrical pieces in their own rights and share various common textual, thematic elements, as well as notable differences. Both plays play a critical role in addressing the betrayal of women by men and how the women responded the betrayal. One fundamental difference between the “By the Bog of Cats” and “Medea” is the way in which the female character in the former .. enacts her revenge on her disloyal husband. Another deviation is the reason for which both female characters kills their children.

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