While crisis and climax seem similar enough to be mistaken for each other, Medea‘s crisis and climax are two separate events which work together to create the highest tension of the play. The crisis is the death of Glauce and Creon. In one short event, both Jason’s fiance and his future father-in-law are dead. With them go his hopes of fame and fortune for himself and his sons. Already devastated by this, Jason is set up for the final blow of the climax. Medea, who has already destroyed Jason’s hopes for upward mobility, goes on to kill their children.
The reversal that occurs with these actions is an act of total revenge on Jason. First, he loses those who would help him move up in the world; next, he loses his entire reason for leaving Medea in the first place. He now has nothing and no one except Medea, which is the position in which Medea found herself at the beginning of the play. Their roles have been switched, and now Jason is at her mercy. Jason demands the bodies of his sons, much as Medea begged to keep them when she discovered that she had been exiled. Just as Jason denied her requests, Medea now rejects his. In an ironic parody of Jason’s thirst for upward mobility, Medea ascends to the skies in Apollo’s chariot, taking her sons’ bodies with her. Jason is left at the end with no family, having caused their deaths, feeling much as Medea did when she left her grieving father in Colchis.
The beginning stasis is certainly precariously balanced at the tip of a precipice. Jason is leaving Medea to marry Creon’s daughter (apparently without consulting Medea), and she is in this situation without explanation. Medea’s character exceedingly proud and temperamental, and so her fury burns. So, at the beginning of the play, the stasis is as follows. Creon is nervous that Medea will plot against his household, Creon’s daughter is agreeable towards/ excited about getting married, Jason is happy about moving upwards, and Medea is furious and her pride is wounded at Jason’s actions. By the end of the play, we have an extreme change in stasis. Creon and his daughter are dead, Jason is in excruciating pain and grieving for his sons, and Medea is satisfied that she inflicted pain on Jason but mourning her sons.