Antigone And Medea Comparison

Medea and Antigone are two stories of women who are fighting back for what they want, and what they believe is right. Both stories take place in ancient Greece, around the time of its rise to power. Medea and Antigone are both very strong, independent and sometimes very manipulating characters. Even though they are very much similar, they have different moral settings that actually control what they do. Medea is often extremely demanding when it comes to getting what she wants. Antigone will do whatever she needs to do in order for her to get what she wants. Antigone disobeys the law of the king to uphold the law of her own spiritual beliefs. In the middle of the night she decides to leave her house and she sneaks her way into a

Antigone broke mans law and the act of burying Polyneices portrays Antigone’s passionate nature. This is where she takes matters into her own hands and decides to challenge mans law and instead she chooses to follow God.s law. The love that both characters have driven them to sacrifice their lives. Antigone had sacrificed her own life just so she can restore her brother’s honor. Creon states, “we’ll haven’t women’s law here.” He is trying to emphasize on the fact that women actually have no place when it comes to stating the laws. Antigone grows mad about this statement because she is a woman and this relates to another important theme of gender roles. Women are looked down upon in an Athenian society while men are considered to be more superior to women. The play depicts the power of love and the effect on the main character, Antigone, and it acts as a primary factor to commit these acts, which lead her to her own death. In both plays, love can act as a motivating factor to commit these types of acts, which actually lead to a number of tragic deaths of the characters. The contrast here is that the type of love that these primary characters had for all their loved ones. Antigone’s decisions were controlled by the strong family bond she shared with her brother, Polyneices while Medea’s love was from the

Medea and Antigone have both been portrayed as heroes and they both display heroic qualities, which, in ancient Greece was associated only with men. Women in ancient Greece no matter what class you were in, you were suppose to follow the traditional gender roles and the conditions by actually staying inside the homes and act in an obedient passive manner. Both plays went against this view-favoring patriarch meaning that women were excluded when it came to holding power. Heroism, involves a lot of courage and selflessness. Jason married Medea and had two children with her until he decided to abandon her for Creon’s daughter. Euripides describes Medea’s motives to seeing revenge towards Jason, who betrayed her in return for her sacrifice and selflessness, which can be shown when she betrays her family for Jason as she was really in love with him. Antigone is trying to bury her brother who had gone against the state. Creon is preventing her from doing so because their views about the divine laws and the supremacy of the state. Creon’s watchman catches her in the act and she is brought before the king. She tries to justify her actions and she had to obey the eternal laws of right from wrong of any human orders. Creon was not having it his son who was engaged to Antigone threatens to die with her. Her rebellion is just one of the many aspects that make her