Oedipus and Antigone

Mood: sore ankle :(
Listening to: 'Wavin' Flag' by K'naan
Hungry for: tangello!
Bella says: i no i am so coot can u peaz skratch tummi?

So, in English, I am still with my favourite teacher and doing a very interesting course called Heroes and Villains. What I love about this course is that it is a very specific area of English, yet at the same time so broad and diverse - I mean, we're covering everything from Greek poetry to Shakespeare to modern-day blockbusters. Lots of fun.

The main idea of the course is to learn about stereotypical and archetypal characters and storylines, famous and well-executed examples of them, and how we can bend and break rules to make our own writing original and interesting. This is an area I have found personally in my fiction writing that needs some work - originality is insanely difficult when I get immersed deeply in such heavily influential books such as Harry Potter, Twilight and The Time Traveller's Wife.

The first archetype we are studying are Tragedies, and stereotypical characters associated with tragedies. Tragedies are my teacher's personal favourite - I find them a little too dramatic, I mean, EVERYONE DIES, very depressing. At the moment we are studying Antigone by the Greek poet Sophacles, which is chronologically the third of the Three Thebian Plays, although going with the colourful confusion that is history, naturally it was written first.

Important events that happen prior to Antigone is in the first of the Three Thebian Plays (which was written second), Oedipus the King. The long story short of this play is that Oedipus is the wrong man at the wrong time who marries the wrong woman - she just happens to turn out to be his mother as well as his wife. Out of shame, she hangs herself, and he takes the brooches off her dress and stabs his eyes, as he cannot bear to look at his children, products of incest. His children are Polyneices and Eteocles, the elder twin brothers, and Antigone and Ismene, the daughters. When Oedipus leaves Thebes in shame, Creon, Oedipus's wife (Jocasta's) brother, rules as regent until Oedipus's sons come of age.

At the age of eighteen, there is a dispute as to which of the twin brothers should inherit the throne. It is agreed that Eteocles will rule for one year, then Polyneices, and then Eteocles again, and so on and so forth. Eteocles then becomes king, but after the year is up he refuses to relinquish the throne. Polyneices then gets foreign help to invade Thebes, causing shitloads of bloodshed, and eventually it comes down to a man-on-man wrestle. Unfortunately, the brothers kill each other.

Creon, a stubborn and essentially stupid sexist bastard, honours Eteocles as a hero, seeing him as the king who died for his city, but orders Polyneices' body to be left to rot and be devoured by dogs, without a cremation, burial, or mourning period. Antigone is given this message directly, but resolves to bury her brother's body herself to protect him from going to hell. She attempts to recruit Ismene, but she refuses, fearing Creon's degree too much and fearing death and punishment. Antigone bravely sneaks out to her brother's corpse and buries it with a thin layer of dust, leaving no trace. Baffled guards find the dust-veiled body the next day, which outrages Creon.

Antigone for some unexplained and highly debated reson goes back to the body that day, and is caught. Furious, Creon nearly orders both Antigone and Ismene to be executed - Ismene falsly confesses her guilt, whilst Antigone argues her sister's innocence - however, he eventually resolves to just execute Antigone. Antigone is led away to be sealed alive into a cave.

I didn't really read this next bit (or any of it, for the whole matter) word for word, but this I think is the gist of it. Antigone's fiance, Creon's son (so that would be her cousin and her uncle,which is...gross) attempts to defend Antigone, but with little success. Eventually Creon, with the help of his trusted Oracle, sees he is at fault at a) leaving Polyneices' body and b) punishing Antigone, and sets out to her living tomb to try and set things right. However, he finds that she is dead and his son has somehow sneaked in, and commits suicide. After hearing of her son's death, Creon's wife commits suicide as well. The play basically ends with Creon going 'shit.'

That ending right there is the main reason why I don't like tragedies. For me, it just feels like cheating. In no other genre can you kill off people so suddenly and indiscriminately and still get away with it.

But I do love the character of Antigone. Perhaps one of the first literary feminists, Antigone boldly and defiantly goes against the wishes of the men above her - Creon, the sexist bastard, often says that she forgets her place, as a woman, and that he would not be ruled by a woman, and calls his son a 'woman's accomplice'. I love how Sophacles portrayes Antigone as not one of those weak, pretty, feeble characters (*COUGH* Penelope from The Odyssey) but as a woman who thought from her heart and spoke from her soul and died for her cause. Her fiance, Haemon, replaces the typical weak character - he is the wussy combination of Romeo and Juliet to her toughened-up Danae, entering the play, having a fight with his dad, and then conveniently dying. Even her sister, Ismene, although backing out of her sister's outrageously defiant plans, shows bravery by falsly admitting to guilt to stay by her sister's side in death.

I hate Creon so much I almost love him. He's the typical sexist bastard that is glorified in so much insanely sexist Greek literature, yet in this play the sexist bastard is the one who's left crying in the shithole he buried for himself. As he should, I might add.

The storyline also emphasises in the clash between patriotic loyalty and loyalty to one's kin - something that clashes in many people, especially royalty. The major theme of Antigone (apart from death, death and more death), is Antigone's civil disobedience and her extreme, almost psychotic loyalty to her religious beliefs concerning death and the love of her brother, about whom she says 'now that our parents are gone, a brother is not like a husband or a child, that can be replaced', or something along those lines.

So what do you think of Antigone? Please post your comments below.