I looked up a synopsis of Antigone since I had never seen the play.
My summary:
Basically, Creon, the king, wants to bury Etocles properly (he was on his side) and humiliate Polyneices (rebelled against him). Antigone wants to bury Polyneices properly even though it is against Creon's orders. She does anyways and Creon figures out that it was Antigone. Ismene also commits to the crime to die alongside her sister. He decides to spare Ismene and bury Antigone alive in a cave. Tiresias prophesies that Creon will lose a son, because he did not properly bury Polyneices and left Antigone to die underneath the Earth (which is apparently bad). Creon, afraid, decides to bury Polyneices and release Antigone. Eventually, Creon's son Haemon kills himself, because initially Creon would not listen to him to try and save Antigone's life. Also, Antigone and Eurydice (Creon's wife) have killed themselves. He is still king, but Creon has acted against the gods and has thus lost his son and wife.
I wish I would've watched the play, because it sounds very interesting.
3 comments:
To be honest, when I saw the play last year I definitely did not get as much value out of it as I would if i saw it now after reading Oedipus Rex.
I think Antigone (the play) definitely puts a new perspective on Creon and his character in Oedipus Rex. As I've thought about it more, I think that Creon isn't really as innocent as he seems initially. I actually agree with Chong-Gossard's suggestion that Creon could be read as an evil character. In opposition to this claim I thought about his mercy toward Oedipus at the end but then that leads me to think that he must actually be grateful to Oedipus for his fall because Creon now controls Thebes.
From what I just read it seems pretty obvious that women in greek tragedy always seemed to get the "short end of the stick." The fact that Antigone kills herself in the end seems like a fairly typical outcome for a woman of that time period for example Virgil had Dido kill herself.
Now that I know the basic summary, I have begun to remember all the plot in the play. It is interesting to think that the drama department does put on plays that are revelevant to things we read and can actually help up further understand other greek tragedies.
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