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Through the play Medea, Euripides shows us the importance of keeping a promise given. At the beginning of the story, we see the play's two opposing views of promise keeping represented by the Nurse and the Tutor. As she stands outside of Medea's house and laments the way Jason has slighted Medea by taking another wife, the Nurse speaks of the "eternal promise" Jason and Medea made to each other on their wedding day (17-21). The Nurse wishes Jason were dead for the way he has abandoned his wife and children, so strongly does she feel vows should not be broken (83). When the Tutor enters the scene, he expresses a much more cynical view regarding Jason's decision to leave his wife. He asks the nurse, "Have you only just discovered / That everyone loves himself more than his neighbor? / Some have good reason, others get something out of it. / So Jason neglects his children for the new bride" (85-88). The Tutor feels that Jason's leaving Medea is only a part of life, as "Old ties g!
ive place to new ones"...