Medea Reversal Stage Essay

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“The art of the dramatist is very like the art of the architect. A plot has to be built up just as a house is built—story after story; and no edifice has any chance of standing unless it has a broad foundation and a solid frame.” A house can only be built one story after the other, just as a story can only be told one stage after the other. Every story that adopts the dramatic structure requires all four stages; reversal, recognition, suffering, and reunion. Although each one of these stages play an important role in developing the story, the reversal stage is the most influential because it offers the story a strong foundation, just like a house needs. For the story to run accordingly, it needs a turning point that diverts the character’s …show more content…

This stage allows the readers/audience to familiarize themselves with the character through their backstory. In the beginning of Medea, Euripides allows readers to get to know Medea through the first scene. The nurse introduces Medea by stating, “I am afraid she may think of some dreadful thing, for her heart is violent. She will never put up with the treatment she is getting”(p.2). This scene acts as a slight foreshadow to the story. The nurse illustrates Medea’s character as passionate and violent. Medea’s reversal stage introduces Medea which in turn, allows readers to predict what Medea is capable of and what she might proceed to do, without even meeting her, which is important in the readers’ analysis of the play. In the reversal stage of Stranger than Fiction, Harold’s discovery of the narrator serves as an essential part of the story and even his life. Without this encounter, Harold would never find out that his death will soon arrive. Stopping his death appeared to be his true purpose and without the reversal stage, he would have never found out. The reversal stage allows readers to recognize the character’s true purpose in the

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