Essay about the play antigone

The contrast between what the audience knows and what the characters know sets up the tension, the dramatic irony. These added events serve to intensify the play. Although the last play in the Oedipus trilogy, Antigone was written first.

Suggested Essay Topics

Hire Writer The body of Polyneices was to not be sanctified by holy rites, but was planned to be left unburied on the battlefield for animals to prey on it. Since she disobeyed authority, her and her sister are temporarily imprisoned.

To some up the foregoing, in honoring her brother she is performing the role of woman and warrior at once. A few underlying messages of this story is the right of the individual to reject societies infringement on the freedom to perform a personal obligation, and the concept of divine law.

Antigone feels that nobody has the right to dictate how she plans to bury her family member. In addition, Creon demands civil disobedience above all.

Creon believes that the worst thing an individual can do is act against authority.

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In contrast, Antigone believes that state law is not absolute. Meaning one should be able to act against the law in extreme cases to honor the gods. Sourvinou-Inwood is stating that because the animals had not touched the dead body, it could be a sign from the gods that a proper burial should be in order.

That Creon could have been wrong and the gods wanted Polyneices buried.

SparkNotes: Antigone: Suggested Essay Topics

Moreover, the Greeks supported absolute monarchs, however, simultaneously they also believed in divine law and had a profound amount of respect for the gods and their laws.

Sophocles, BC, line This statement shows how Creon has little consideration for others around him. Directors Letter To Juliet's Actress Essay He does not care that Antigone wants to properly bury her family member; he only cares about the fact that Antigone went against authority and disobeyed the law.

The fact of the matter is that Creon is an oppressive tyrant who possesses numerous tyrannical qualities. By not listening to his people, and by only practicing his own beliefs, he in fact is destroying the city himself.

For instance, he is more concerned with preserving certain values of law rather than the good of the city. Another aspect of Antigone is the concept of kinship. Kinship could be defined as a group that perceives their social universe as divided into two opposed spheres of moral alignment.

On one hand, there is the familial domain, on the other, the sphere on non-kinship. Warfare between kin is considered a heinous crime, for example, the brothers Eteocles and Polyneices murdering one another on the battlefield.Essay on Antigone: Moral Law vs.

Political Law. ANTIGONE 3 January Moral Law vs.

Political Law The theme of Antigone is the struggle between political law and moral law; the difference of following the law because it is the law and following one’s own morals because you feel it is what is right.

- Creon as the Tragic Hero in Antigone This essay will compare two of the characters in “Antigone”, Antigone and Creon, in an effort to determine the identity of the tragic hero in this tale.

To identify the tragic hero in Sophocles’ renowned play “Antigone”, we should first consider both the elements present in Greek tragedies and what characteristics . Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before BC. It is the third of the three Theban plays chronologically, but was the first written.

The play expands on the Theban legend that predated it and picks up where Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes ends. Yet, this phrase can also apply to women in other time periods such as in ancient Greece seen in the Sophocles’ play entitled Antigone. In Antigone, the protagonist, Antigone, is a daughter of the house of Lauis, which is a noble, ruling family that has been through much affliction from deaths in the family.

In this play the characters were Antigone, Ismene, Creon, Haemon, Teiresias, and First messenger, Second messenger, Eurydice, and the Chorus of Theban Elders. We will write a custom essay sample on The Sophocles Play Antigone: specifically for you. The focus is on the character traits of the main character of the play Antigone with some analysis of Creon's actions towards Antigone.

The play begins with a general introduction the Greek theatre of the time (the fifth and sixth centuries BC) giving an outline of what theatre meant to the people of ancient Greece as well as what it meant to the writers .