“‘I love you!’
'Esch!’ The skin on his throat is red, his scar white.
‘I loved you!’
I hit his Adam’s apple with the V where my thumb and pointer finger cross. He chokes.
‘I loved you!’ This is Medea wielding the knife. This is Medea cutting. I rake my fingernails across his face, leave pink scratches that turn red, fill with blood. (204)
In this passage, Ward explicitly connects Esch and Medea. The fury that Esch feels in the moment when Manny says “I ain’t got nothing here,” is very similar to the anger Medea feels towards Jason after he tells her that they are through and that he will be marrying the daughter of the King of Corinth. In this connection, we see two young women, hopelessly in love with a man who is only using her for his own selfish needs. In the case of Esch, Manny is using her for her body and for his own sexual gain. In the case of Medea, Jason is using her powerful abilities to acquire the Golden Fleece. She is forced to betray her father because of her own relentless love for Jason, so, in a way, she is trapped through her love for him. In the same way, Esch is trapped through her love for Manny. She loves him too much to get rid of the baby that was conceived through him, and so she has to find strength to care for it. The two both have physical and mental struggles with their love towards another character, and both must use strength to try and overcome it.
This painting by Eugene Delacroix, entitled “Medea About to Kill her Children” shows Medea in the moments right before she murdered her two sons for revenge on Jason. It was painted in 1838 and is displayed at the Musée Du Louvre in Paris, France.
This picture shows the DC Superhero Phillipus. Although she is a minor DC character, I thought she represented Esch well because of how strong she is. Philippus is an Amazon warrior, which not only makes her one of the fiercest women known to history, it also means that she would have come into contact with Jason and the Argonauts. By the end of the story, Esch has grown so much as a person. Through all of her hardships, such as surviving the hurricane, finding out she was going to be a single teenage mother, and accepting the fact that Manny would not be there for her, she has acquired an amount of courage and bravery that would not typically be expected from someone her age, especially who was pregnant. All of this makes her perfect to represent Esch.
I liked your idea that Medea and Esch were both being used and then both were trapped in different ways, I hadn't thought of that but it's so true!! Also, I loved how you compared Esch to a superhero, because at the beginning of the book, she doesn't have any power for herself--but at the end of the book, she learns how to prioritize herself and becomes self-confident, like a superhero.
ReplyDelete