Jason had betrayed her and left her with the children. The perfect way to get back at a man in this time period was to kill their sons. This is exactly what Medea does, even though she loves them as well, she doesn't want Jason to be able to be near them, so she kills them. This ties in with the Greek tragedy because the tragic hero has to pass through suffering. Medea passes through suffering both in the obvious betrayal by Jason, and in her revenge by killing her own kin. Next, Medea goes about her plan and has a different time block on which to complete it than Claire. Medea is being thrown out of town by the king; as a result her revenge must be completed in a twenty-four hour period. The revenge must be quick, but stunning as well. Medea is mischievous and tricky in her ways. She tricks the king to get what she wants. Lastly, the chorus is much different in Medea compared to The Visit. The chorus is an actual chorus made up of the strophe and antistrophe. Throughout the play the chorus is by Medea's side, as well as on her side. The chorus sees her revenge as something that is deserved, and in the end the Gods reward her for her actions. The chorus stays with the same beliefs throughout the play and doesn't vary from them. This in part shows the dramatic irony. The audience knows what is going to happen because the chorus tells them, yet the tragic hero, Medea, does not know. In The Visit these same ideas are demonstrated by Claire but in a different way.
In Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit, Claire is put in a similar situation to Medea. She is scorned by a former lover, Schill, and in return wishes to seek revenge. When Claire was seventeen, Schill basically accused her of being a whore by his actions. He said it was not his child that she bore, and bribed two other men to say they slept with Claire as well. Claire had already laid her wrath upon these two men, by gouging out their eyes and castrating them.