Essay On Antigone And Frankenstein

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“When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” (Shelley, Frankenstein 109). In Frankenstein, the Monster receives a life in which he cannot control the outcome, even though he tries to. While the Monster deals with fate, Antigone in Antigone exhibits full use of her free will. The two characters possess free will and both of them can claim victim to fate. However, the Monster has more of a right to make the plea of destiny while Antigone should own up to her deliberate actions. The Monster’s denial of acceptance by both his creator and society as well as his responding acts of violence can claim to exist as results of fate while Antigone’s actions exhibit free will from her decisions to break the law and act upon her pride.

There exist more similarities between Frankenstein and Antigone than just fate and free will. Antigone and the Monster both value the importance of family and how people influence an individual’s actions and character formation. Antigone’s sole motive revolves around honoring her brother, no matter the consequences. Antigone believes that she must fulfill the duty to honor her brother, and cannot understand why Creon follows a law against honoring his own family. Creon and Antigone become adversaries to one another as they have different ideas on how to handle the death of Polyneices. In Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy, author Simon Goldhill states, “The central question which joins and separates Creon and Antigone is whether the shared blood of the family outweighs the hostile intent of a brother towards the political community” (31). Antigone reacts to how Cre...

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Antigone expresses her use of free will when she decides to disobey Creon and let her pride control her while the Monster is fated to receive rejection by both his creator and the societal world. While these two characters both had the opportunity to choose correctly and make life a positive place, neither of them ended up doing so. However, the reasons behind the endings are different. Antigone and her goals led her to make the decision to disobey and die, as many others died around her as results of her decisions. The Monster, on the other hand, did not have much of an option on how people would react to his presence and appearance. Both Antigone and the Monster had good intentions, but these intentions did not always play out. Antigone says, “I was born to join in love, not hate - that is my nature” (Rudall 28).