Read Euripides's Medea.
Compose a paper, 2 pages in length, that addresses an aspect of the tragedy.

The primary purpose of the assignment is to encourage you to read the text closely and to engage the ideas contained in it. The secondary purpose is to help you practice your analytic and writing skills in a highly disciplined manner. Be concise. Organize your thoughts coherently.

1. Identifiable thesis sentence.
2. Topic sentences at beginning of each paragraph.
3. A title - something meaningful, not "Paper One."

Papers that fail to conform to these and other standards of good expository English prose will receive a summary grade of F. Spelling, grammar, and everything else you learned in English 110C counts.

• Remember that this is poetry. Although the Penguin edition translated by John Davies presents the text in prose format, notice that the sentences are periodic and should be read slowly and with consideration.
• All the action scenes (murders, flight) take place off stage. The compelling scenes are the confrontations, spoken face to face. There is no trickery, no deception, no lying (except where surprise is necessary). Instead we see real points of view in conflict. There is no possibility of compromise between these points of view, and consequently the characters clash.
• We do not want to hear about hubris or tragic flaws or other high-schoolish interpretive devices. Instead, read the text. Build your argument upon what you see there yourself. Support your argument with frequent and specific reference to the text.

Write on whatever topic you think you can argue best.

• Formulate an argument: "Although horrifying, Medea was justified in murdering her own children, [and here's why.]"
• Support with lots of evidence from the text.

Papers will be evaluated on their

• reasoning
• clarity
• organization
• use of specific evidence from the text

Do NOT merely summarize the text.