Several similar themes are present between the three plays Antigone, Medea, and Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles and one by Euripides. The three plays were written during the time of the ancient Greek civilization and, therefore, contain the morals and values of that time. Throughout the three plays, it is observed that the protagonists all carry similar traits: a sense of duty and stubbornness in their ways. Both of these traits lead to a tragic ending for the characters in the three plays. By observing the three plays and comparing them, readers are able to see these two traits play out among them and see how they ultimately lead to their downfall.
Early Greek civilization was centered on a sense of duty; duty to your
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peers, your family, and your people. Similarly, in these three tragic plays, duty is one of the most universal motifs presented. The protagonists, and others, feel that if they are responsible for something, they must complete it whether or not the outcome is pleasing to them.
In Antigone, Creon feels his duty as king has a great importance than his family and their happiness. One moment this is observed is when he exclaims, “Unworthy wives for sons of mine I hate” (Sophocles 22). The women he once thought were good for his sons are now unworthy. Creon is caught up in his job and his duty to his people that he forgets about his morals and the values that are more important than the law. Creon does not realize he is neglecting his family until the very end of the play and soon finds that all he once loved is now lost. Oedipus finds himself in a similar situation when he realizes he is the one that killed his own father and married his mother. His sense of duty to his people and to himself is so strong that he took it upon himself to banish himself from the land and to gouge his own eyes out. He felt the shame that he had caused and decided that his people would be better off if he were not there. Antigone, on the other hand, is in a different situation. She feels that it is her duty to bury her brother Polynices even though this meant that her own life would be lost.
Although Creon, her uncle, ruled against the burial, she had a strong sense of family obligation and she stayed with it, no matter the consequence. Similarly, Medea felt as though it was her responsibility to send her children to the afterworld. Medea did not want her kids “to be slain by a hand less kindly to them” (Euripides 40). Her instinct to protect her children from harm is customary among mothers and proves her loyalty to her duty as a mother. She wants to protect her children, even if it means they must lose their lives. All of these literary works in which a sense of duty is the primary trait seem to have different varieties of death and avoidable consequences. If their sense of responsibility and duty to others had been avoided, many of the deaths and consequences could have been easily evaded. Another trait that the characters of the three plays have in common is stubbornness. This trait, amongst many, is the root of most of the problems in the plays. Antigone and Creon are equally stubborn, neither giving into the other’s demands. Although Antigone is not following the laws of the land by burying her brother, she quickly claims that she would do it again, even though Creon tries to give her a second chance. Creon, being forced to follow his duty as ruler, sentences her to death since she does not obey his commands. This sentencing leads to the downfall of all that he loves, since he has sentenced his niece to death. Readers cannot just blame Antigone’s stubbornness to give up on burying her brother and follow Creon’s rule, but Creon’s as well. Creon could have easily annulled the law and allowed Antigone to live. Although this would have proved to his people that he is a weak king, he would have still had someone in his family living. He chose his sense of duty over his family and allowed his stubbornness to get the best of him when he chose to sentence her to death. Another character, Oedipus, is just as stubborn as his daughter Antigone. His yearn for knowledge of his past and his persistence in gaining that knowledge relentlessly caused him to uncover truths of his past that lead to his downfall. Oedipus reasons that, “it cannot be that having such a clue I should refuse to solve the mystery of my parentage” (Sophocles 38). He has a chance to learn about his past and he believes he must take it. As king, Oedipus could have taken his ruling back and ended his search for reason; yet, his stubbornness gets in the way and leads him to his past, which in turn, leads him to his own self- banishment. Lastly, Medea’s stubbornness is also responsible to the great tragedy that occurs. Aegus tries to tell her “if you reach my land…I will try to befriend you” (Euripides 24). Medea, however, refuses to give in to him. She must avenge the wrong done to her by Jason, no matter the consequences. Readers are shown how easily the deaths in this play could have been evaded and ultimately come to the reasoning that if Medea had suppressed her anger towards Jason, no deaths would have happened. These characters show us how pride and protection of reputation can lead to stubbornness of ways and to a tragic ending. Through analyzing the three plays Media, Antigone, and Oedipus Rex, stubbornness and a sense of duty are two motifs that are found to be important to these tragedies because they show how each character led themselves to their own destruction. By including these similar motifs in all of the tragic plays, each author was able to portray to its readers how duty and stubbornness can cause self-destruction.
In Sophocles' Greek tragedy, Antigone, two characters undergo character changes. During the play the audience sees these two characters' attitudes change from close-minded to open-minded. It is their close-minded, stubborn attitudes, which lead to their decline in the play, and ultimately to a series of deaths. In the beginning Antigone is a close minded character who later becomes open minded. After the death of her brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, Creon becomes the ruler of Thebes. He decides that Eteocles will receive a funeral with military honors because he fought for his country. However, Polyneices, who broke his exile to " spill the blood of his father and sell his own people into slavery", will have no burial. Antigone disagrees with Creon's unjust actions and says, " Creon is not strong enough to stand in my way." She vows to bury her brother so that his soul may gain the peace of the underworld. Antigone is torn between the law placed against burying her brother and her own thoughts of doing what she feels should be done for her family. Her intent is simply to give her brother, Polyneices, a proper burial so that she will follow "the laws of the gods." Antigone knows that she is in danger of being killed for her actions and she says, "I say that this crime is holy: I shall lie down with him in death, and I shall be as dear to him as he to me." Her own laws, or morals, drive her to break Creon's law placed against Polyneices burial. Even after she realizes that she will have to bury Polyneices without the help of her sister, Ismene, she says: Go away, Ismene: I shall be hating you soon, and the dead will too, For your words are hateful. Leave me my foolish plan: I am not afraid of the danger; if it means death, It will not be the worst of deaths-death without honor. Here Ismene is trying to reason with Antigone by saying that she cannot disobey the law because of the consequences. Antigone is close-minded when she immediately tells her to go away and refuses to listen to her. Later in the play, Antigone is sorrowful for her actions and the consequences yet she is not regretful for her crime. She says her crime is just, yet she does regret being forced to commit it.
In the beginning of the play Creon is portrayed as King and a leader unwilling to bend the rules in order to protect the city. The way Creon responds to Antigone, “While I’m alive, no woman is going to lord over me”, shows he is stubborn and also his pride. (593-594) While the play continues Creon’s pride grows, and he thinks he can never be wrong and punishes Antigone by locking her up in a cave. However, things turn a different way when the Prophet tells Creon that he must free Antigone or face the wrath of Gods. After hearing this Creon changes his mind, “I shackled her, I’ll set her free myself. I am afraid it’s best to keep the established laws…” (1236-1238) But, as Creon tries to set Antigone free, he is faced with suicides of Antigone and Haemon, and followed by the suicide of his wife, Eurydice. This moment in the play serves as the downfall of Creon. But unlike Antigone, Creon reaches anagnorisis, which is the moment in the play when the tragic character realizes his hubris has led to his downfall. “And the guilt is all mine- can never be fixed…god help me, I admit all!”(1441-1445) Ultimately, Creon is more of a proper tragic character than Antigone because of he has an epiphany, a moment when he realizes his hubris has caused conflicts and deaths in the
In the play, Sophocles examines the nature of Antigone and Creon who have two different views about life, and use those views against one another. Antigone who is depicted as the hero represents the value of family. According to Richard Braun, translator of Sophocles Antigone, Antigone’s public heroism is domestically motivated: “never does [Antigone] give a political explanation of her deed; on the contrary, from the start [Antigone] assumes it is her hereditary duty to bury Polynices, and it is from inherited courage that [Antigone] expects to gain the strength required for the task” (8). Essentially, it is Antigone’s strong perception of family values that drive the instinct to disobey Creon’s orders and to willingly challenge the King’s authority to dictate her role in society.
Oedipus accidentally killed his father and married his mother. Because of that act, Oedipus ended up cursing his family and died a horrible death. After his death, his sons inherited his kingdom and in a power struggle ended up killing each other. One of the sons, Polynices attacked the city to try and claim power from his brother. But since both of the brothers died and the city was not taken Polynices was labeled as a traitor whereas the other brother who died defending the city was celebrated as a hero. Creon decreed at the beginning of the play Antigone that no one was to bury the body of traitorous Polynices. Antigone felt that it was here responsibility to bury the body because he was still a member of her family. This led to a huge argument with Creon who felt he shouldn’t be crossed because he was the leader of the state. Eventually both Creon and Antigone are destroyed by the gods (and by each other) through their own actions.
In the struggle between Creon and Antigone, Sophocles' audience would have recognized a genuine conflict of duties and values. From the Greek point of view, both Creon's and Antigone's positions are flawed, because both oversimplify ethical life by recognizing only one kind of good or duty. By oversimplifying, each ignores the fact that a conflict exists at all, or that deliberation is necessary. Moreover, both Creon and Antigone display the dangerous flaw of pride in the way they justify and carry out their decisions. Antigone admits right from the beginning that she wants to carry out the burial because the action is glorious. Antigone has a savage spirit; she has spent most of her life burying her family members.
Antigone, as a character, is extremely strong-willed and loyal to her faith. Creon is similarly loyal, but rather to his homeland, the city of Thebes, instead of the gods. Both characters are dedicated to a fault, a certain stubbornness that effectively blinds them from the repercussions of their actions. Preceding the story, Antigone has been left to deal with the burden of her parents’ and both her brothers’ deaths. Merely a young child, intense grief is to be expected; however, Antigone’s emotional state is portrayed as frivolous when it leads her to directly disobey Creon’s orders. She buries her brother Polynices because of her obedience to family and to the gods, claiming to follow “the gods’ unfailing, unwritten laws” (Sophocles 456-457). CONTINUE
Although Antigone has a bad reputation with Creon, and possibly Ismene, for being insubordinate, she stays true to her values throughout the entire play by following the law of gods, not so that she could appease them, but because she admired its value of honor and respect to loved ones that have passed away. This devotion and determination to give her brother a proper burial shows the true essence of her being: that loyalty to family is in fact hold above all else.
Antigone holds her love of family, and respect to the dead, elevated beyond the laws of Creon, whom she believes, has no righteous justification to close his eyes to the honor of the deceased. In her determination to fulfill Polynices' rights, she runs directly into Creon's attempts to re-establish order. This leads to encounters of severe conflict between the dissimilarities of the two, creating a situation whereby both Creon and Antigone expose their stubbornness and self will.
Sophocles, a famous and renowned Greek dramatist, is the playwright to both the play Oedipus the King and Antigone. Along with Antigone and Oedipus Sophocles had also wrote Electra and Fete. Sophocles wrote many Greek tragedies which are plays in which the main character in the play suffers a tragedy due to some flaw of theirs. An example would be how Oedipus (thinking he is defying a prophecy) murders his father and weds his mother. His flaw was him trying to defy fate if he had not just stayed where he was he would’ve been fine. His works are referred to and taught all over the world in many schools along with colleges; this should give light to how will written his plays are and how compelling the themes can be. Oedipus the King and Antigone are both Greek tragedies written by the same person and have very significant differences in literary conflict, how the characters are rendered and plot.
The great Sophoclean play, Oedipus Rex is an amazing play, and one of the first of its time to accurately portray the common tragic hero. Written in the time of ancient Greece, Sophocles perfected the use of character flaws in Greek drama with Oedipus Rex. Using Oedipus as his tragic hero, Sophocles’ plays forced the audience to experience a catharsis of emotions. Sophocles showed the play-watchers Oedipus’s life in the beginning as a “privileged, exalted [person] who [earned his] high repute and status by…intelligence.” Then, the great playwright reached in and violently pulled out the audience’s most sorrowful emotions, pity and fear, in showing Oedipus’s “crushing fall” from greatness.
As we consider these roles, we can look at Antigone who goes against the established expectations of the woman’s role of the time and stands up to Creon when she thinks he is being wrongful. Creon thinks that women should never disobey men; should a woman stand up against a man, he is inferior to the woman (pp 209). Antigone defies the King’s edict of civil law by following God’s law, burying her brother on two different occasions (pp 208). The first time she buried him was to keep her mind at ease because Creon would not allow anyone to bury him. The second instance was because the wind blew the dirt off her brother, after which Antigone decided to bury him for the second time. Antigone knew that defying the King in this way would result in her death, but still she accepted full responsibility. She could not live with herself if she put the will of a man before the law of God, feeling as though she would be dead in another way by submitting to King Creon’s edict (pp 209).
In his tragic trilogy, The Theban Plays, Sophocles portrays the essence of Ancient Greek life; their culture, politics, religion and the maxims that are intended to guide their daily life through the actions of the main characters, Oedipus, Creon, and Antigone. Sophocles employs the use of thematic structures that coherently affects each character uniquely, and one of the most common themes depicted in these plays is that of fate vs freewill. In the Theban trilogy, Sophocles uses a well-structured theme of fate vs freewill to establish the relationship between the Greeks and the gods, as well as to illustrate the limits of mortality.
Creon was made king after both of Oedipus’ sons died in battle. Since he was not meant to be the next king, he feels as though he must prove his power as king, by ordering that anyone who tries to bury Polyneices will be sentenced to death. Once the news is received that the “man” at fault for burying Polyneices is in fact Antigone, he is forced to choose either his moral duty to his family or his duty to the state. He chooses to follow his right given as king and enforce the law he had already created. He positions his loyalty to the state over that of his family and condemns Antigone to death. Creon encounters opposition from friends and family however, he disregards their advice. His son Haemon, informs Creon that what he is doing is upsetting the people of Thebes. Creon, however, does not listen to his son and continues with his plan until he speaks to Teiresias, a blind prophet. Teiresias warns Creon that he is angering the gods by banning the burial of Polyneices and by punishing Antigone for doing what is morally right. It is not until after his discussion with Teiresias, Creon realizes that he is wrong. Creon exclaims, “That is true…It troubles me. Oh it is hard to give in! but it is worse to risk everything for stubborn pride….It is hard to deny the heart! But I will do it: I will not fight with destiny.”
Many motifs are shared between both the plays Medea, by Euripides, and Oedipus the King, by Sophocles. Both playwrights were known for their innovation in the theatre, so their plays both contain daring elements, along with the more common ones (Gainor, et al. 89/135.) The plays were written in the same time period so they contain the same morals that were being taught to the writers in ancient Greek society. Not only did the plays share the same popular culture beliefs, but they also contained a lot of the same characters- as they were believed to be real Gods, Goddesses, and creatures, by the society. I believe the most prominent motifs shared between the plays are revenge, duty, and death. Revenge plays a great deal in the decision making
Tragedies written by Ancient Greeks touch on sensitive moral and societal issues that raise a question about whether or not the course of one’s life is predetermined by the gods and the individual has no self-will to guide it. Spirituality was a significant part of Ancient Greek cul-ture which is displayed as unpreventable fate accompanying tragic heroes in plays. The plays Oe-dipus Rex and Antigone written by Ancient Greek author Sophocles explore the theme in ancient Greek tragedy of destiny versus free will. The main protagonists are tragic heroes who are des-tined to share a common strength, such as courage and common weaknesses such as stubbornness as well as to face their tragic doom. First, Oedipus and Antigone are both of a high standing, which distinguishes them from other characters in the plays. Oedipus is a King of Thebes and Antigone is his daughter, and therefore a princess of Thebes. Both of them show bravery and courage in fighting for what they believe is right. While