Antigone Moral Development

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Antigone Essay
In the play “Antigone”, Sophocles depicts the story of a young girl, Antigone, defying the ways of an all powerful ruler, Creon, in order to send her brother’s soul into the afterlife. Kohlberg’s theory of Moral Development is a series of stages that describe the way a person would react to a given moral problem. Antigone faces several difficult decisions; however, she remains a morally static character.
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development demonstrates the theory of what people do and why people do it. Lawrence Kohlberg wrote six theories of moral development, which consist of three levels and two stages in each level. The levels are Pre-Conventional, Conventional, and Postconventional. In the Pre-Conventional level, two stages are …show more content…

And now you can prove what you are:
A true sister, or a traitor to your family. (P.20-28)
Antigone shows that she is willing to defy her ruler because she thinks he is corrupt. She shows that she is in stage six of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development. She is in the stage called Principled Conscience. This stage is where a person goes against a rule that they think is not right. Antigone is in this stage because she believes that Creon’s rule, about burying her brother, is unjust and should be disobeyed. Antigone is not going against Creon’s rule just to get in trouble, she is doing it because she thinks it is the right thing to do. When deciding what to do, Antigone didn’t think about the consequences, she was only doing right by her family and by herself.. Overall, in the beginning of the play, Antigone is at stage six of Kohlberg’s Theories, and she wants to do what’s right in her mind.
At the end of the play, Antigone does not go through a major change. In other words, Antigone remains a static character. Throughout the play, Antigone does not change her views on disobeying Creon’s rule, even when she is questioned about

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