The role of the choir in MedeaIn section 18 of the Poetics Aristotle criticizes Euripides for not allowing "the choir to be one of the actors and to be a part of the whole and participate in the dramatic action, Aristotle may think of the emblem of the last works of Euripides (also satirized by Aristophanes), but he is certainly wrong about Medea choral odes are not only all intimately linked to the action but are also essential to the meaning of the work, especially because here, as elsewhere (e.g. Hecuba), Euripides forces us to reevaluate his main protagonist halfway and uses the chorus (in part) to indicate that change. Her first speech Medea wins over the chorus with a call for solidarity in the face of the victimization of women by a male-dominated society, and this response from the chorus is an essential step in the paradoxical task of poet to win sympathy and understanding for a mother who kills her children. But as that first speech already indicates, Medea is and is not a typical (Greek) woman: she is a foreigner....