Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Metamorphoses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Metamorphosis
Humanity vs. Nature
Love and Destruction
Gods and Humans
Time, Fate, and Poetry
Summary
Analysis
Before king Pelias’s daughters can punish Medea for killing their father, Medea flies off in her chariot. She flies over many fields and mountains where notable events occurred. She flies over Hyrie’s lake, named after a mother who cried a lake of tears over her son whom she believed fell to his death but had really been transformed into a swan. She passes places where other transformations took place.
Medea’s flight over the places where notable events and transformations occurred is a reminder that metamorphoses are constantly changing the landscape and moving history forward throughout the world. Everything in the universe—whether by transformation or human action—is in a constant state of change.
Themes
When Medea arrives home, she kills all her children with her sword. Avoiding Jason’s rage, she flies away again in her chariot. She flies to Athens where King Aegeus greets her and soon marries her.
Mysteriously, Medea kills her children but not Jason. The fact that she doesn’t kill Jason makes her both a murderer and an adulteress by the time she marries King Aegeus.
Themes
