Love In Jesmyn Ward's Salvage The Bones

In Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward parallels the mythological story of Medea in order to highlight her representation of women. The use of Medea, who is embodied in various aspects within the three main female characters, allows Ward’s work to obtain a sense of universality to her narrative. Also with this incorporation, Ward is able to change the dominant perspective of “blackness” that has plagued southern literature written by African-American authors. Salvage the Bones occurs in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, following Esch,who has just found out she is pregnant, and her poor family just days before the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina. Medea, an anti-hero, who succumbs to her own decisions and the demons of love represents a dynamic femininity, rather than the stereotypical aspect of which is what being a female is. Ward is able to show that women are not only powerful but can also be strong, independent yet vulnerable and ferocious. Through Esch, China and Hurricane Katrina with the corresponding Greek mythology, Ward shows her depiction of a women by addressing common stereotypes and rejecting them.

“I glanced at his face, the sweat like glaze. Another me would’ve licked it off, and it would’ve tasted like salt.” (Ward 34) Desire can run deep in every teenage girl’s thoughts and actions when falling for the older boy that seems so close and yet so far. Whether it’s from blinded love, deep infatuation, or hypnotic adoration, the first love is sometimes more than a person can bear. At times love is irrational and does not always equal common sense, especially when considering your first love. In Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward shows how a first love can pull a person so far under its spell and make ones thoughts revolve around the idea of love even if it isn’t always reciprocated. This is where we often find our main character Esch, a 15

Euripides’ Medea, is a play that follows the journey of a young woman seeking vengeance against her husband, well now ex-husband. The steps she takes to get her revenge make Medea seem like a monster. However, her actions and the torments she has endured make it appear as though she may suffer from a mental illness. So the question is, does Medea have some form of mental illness, or was she just enraged by the injustices committed by her “loving” husband? Evidence leans more toward her being mentally unfit than her being a murderer.

The author, Diane Ackerman, makes the connection of love by connecting that “love is the great intangible” And that “love is throughout history” using descriptive language.

The ancient Greek tragedies, Antigone by Sophocles and Medea by Euripides, both contain compelling arguments conducted amongst its main characters. The tale of Antigone describes the struggle of a young women who is punished for disobeying mortals in order to respect the gods. Medea gives an account of a woman who seeks revenge after being tremendously grieved when betrayed by her husband. The main characters of both tragedies find themselves in heated debates with their male counterparts. Perhaps the most convincing arguments come from Antigone's claim to Creon regarding her innocence, and Jason's exchange with Medea.

“Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women/ Are the most wretched” (Euripides 229-230).

Upon first reading this play, emotions of anger, disappointment, and relief swirled to the surface. The fact that Medea was to escape without any consequences angered me so much, but as I thought about it more, my emotions began to shift. It wasn’t as if Medea murdering her children was something she wanted to do. She had to have gone through so much to push her to that point. How can I better justify her actions and relate it to a 21st century audience?

We are boats subject to the tides and currents of our emotions. Strong and powerful emotions have been the ignition fueling countless social movements as well as horrid tragedies. Emotions are as unpredictable as they are complex. Implementing Eleonore Stump’s analysis of love as well as the arguments for eliminating anger by Owen Flanagan and the Stoic philosophers, the new sentient robots should not be given the ability to experience human emotions because of their characteristics of destructiveness and unpredictability.

Euripides’s play Medea consists of minor characters who spout wise and generalized statements about humanity as a whole. One of these statements, spoken by the chorus, is, “It is a strange form of anger, difficult to cure,/When two friends turn upon each other in hatred.” (pg. 17, 12-13). The claim is true about both the play—specifically the characters Medea and Jason—as well as all of humanity.

In Antigone and Medea , the women are ruled by their emotions. Due to this, they make impromptu decisions which leave them in a vulnerable state. Medea feels betrayed by Jason, and her heartbroken hearts fills with rage for him. She becomes so irate she makes an deathly decision, “oh, what misery! Cursed sons, and a mother for cursing! Death take you all – you and your father” (Euripides 20). Her irrational decision is caused by the misery she is in, and it overrules her rational thinking. The threatening tone she gives her children helps illustrate the fact that she plans to have death take her children & Jason, due to Jason’s betrayal to her. Even her children are endangered due to her irate state of mind. Furthermore, this connects to

Under Homer’s supposed ‘Hero Ethic’, it can be understood that an individual should support one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. This system leaves little to no room for forgiveness or for mercy. Jason has become her enemy by abandoning Medea and their children. He justifies this by pointing out that he has given her “more than [she] deserve[s]” as Medea now lives in “the center of the world.” However, Medea views him as “A brutal man whom [she] once loved [that] has smashed [her]/in the face so hard [she] wear[s] the face of death.”Medea is portrayed as reacting to Jason’s betrayal by “doing what other heroes before her had done...when confronted with an enemy. She schemes, she tricks, she deceives,” and she seeks revenge on those who have harmed her. Medea enforces this notion that she is merely doing what any self-respecting man, Greek, or Hero would do when she scoffs at Creon's concern over her type, stating: “A woman like me!

The Lovely Bones is a book about a girl being murdered and watching her family struggle to cope. The book takes place in December in 1973 when no one was worried about crimes happening in their neighborhood. The theme is about Mr. Harvey killing Susie and watching her family fall apart because of it. However, the movie doesn’t give as much detail as the book does.

Medea was an absolute lunatic. Before moving to Corinth Medea killed her brother by chopping him up and throwing him in the ocean. She then tricks the king’s daughters into cutting him up and boiling him. Once in Corinth Medea finds out that her husband, Jason, is marrying the daughter of Creon. This infuriates Medea and she has to have her revenge. After talking Creon into letting her and her sons stay in Corinth for another day this is when Medea begins to plot out her revenge. It is shown that she has gone a bit crazy when she says, “Medea: [Creon] lets me stay one extra day, to make three enemies corpses:ha! father, daughter, and my husband” (50). Medea starts her murderous rampage by killing Creon and his daughter by giving them cursed gifts. She then argues with herself debating whether or not she should kill her own children. She decides that it is necessary that they die and slaughters them. This was all done just because her husband decided to marry another woman.

Studying the case of Medea, effects of PTSD made her commit Spouse revenge filicide because she wanted to punish her husband, Jason, for betraying her and breaking the oath he took. In his article, Combat Trauma and physiological injury, Brian Lush uses the same method Jonathan Shay used to interpret Achilles’s actions in the Iliad for Medea’s situation. Lush explains “Although Euripides did not cast Medea as a male solider as its protagonist, the play depicts Medea as suffering from the background Trauma, betrayal, isolation and consequent symptoms attributed to combat veterans with lasting psychological injuries” (Lush, 2014, p. 25). Hence using Lush’s view on Medea’s character as a devoted warrior suffering from Traumatic hardships in her experiences with the man she gave everything to, we can understand why she wanted revenge. Medea believes Jason owes her more than just the normal husband-wife obligations a man swears to when marrying a woman; in her view, she helped him be the man that he is and supported him throughout his heroic journey. Without her, Jason would not have succeeded in retrieving the Golden Fleece. Without her, he would not have had his father resurrected. Without her, Jason would have been suffering under the tyranny of his evil uncle Pelias. Without her, Jason would be child free. Without her, he might even be

In the ancient era was the theater plays and a very central part of the future society. Usually written the dramas and love stories. A classic piece of antiquity is Medea, written by Euripides. The play 's fable is that a woman who learns that her husband has been cheating on her. Her ultimate revenge is to kill their own children. The theme is revenge because the whole play is about how Medea 's anger leads to her murder their own children to avenge her husband.