Antigone, the title character of Sophocles’ Antigone, faces the moral dilemma of whether to honor divine or mortal laws. While King Creon has decreed “no one shall bury [Polyneices],” the laws of the Gods dictate that all corpses must be buried...

The success of the narrative arc of both Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone and Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream heavily rely on character interactions with the natural world. In each play respectively, the protagonists must purpose and...

Through the many tales of heroic deeds that have been told over the centuries, a picture has been painted as to the appearance and interpretation of the archetypical character of the hero. This character has been portrayed as a masculine figure...

Though it was written over two millennia ago, Sophocles’ Antigone features one of the preeminent symbols of female defiance in its title character. The play centers on the exploits of Antigone as she openly goes against the king’s decree in the...

The word “feminism” was first officially coined by French socialist Charles Fourier to be used to describe equal rights and social standing for women in the 1890’s. Throughout time, the meaning has changed, but the underlying principles have...

Throughout Antigone, Creon maintains complete confidence in his belief that, in order to prevent anarchy and chaos, the rule of a king must be obeyed even it contradicts proper morals and/or the will of the gods. The decisions that he makes in an...

Author Shannon Alder once said, “Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.” Essentially what Alder is saying is that the things we find fault with in other people are really the things that we do not have and therefore...

What happens when pride takes control of a human? In the plays Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Sophocles paints a dismal picture of what happens, where pride is depicted as both an obstruction to sight and an obstruction to hearing. According to...

There is no shortage of violence and death in the stories and myths adapted to the stage by the Ancient Greek tragedians. However, these actions are almost never depicted explicitly onstage: murders play out offstage while the audience is only...

Foucault’s Discipline and Punish reads partly like a historic text and partly like a speculative essay. Its themes revolving around power, knowledge, and authority however, conveys fundamental principles that is innate to human nature. Foucault...

In the play Antigone, Creon, the demonic king of Thebes, seems extremely evil and cold-hearted and wants to kill his niece for an act that is more heroic than a crime. He is stern and seems extremely heartless. But when examined closer, Creon may...

The Fate Vs. Free Will debate has long been adapted within literary texts, but Anne Carson’s Antigonick puts a spin on it by transforming it to be a debate between two texts. Antigonick is an adapted version of Sophocles’ Antigone, which tells the...

The influence of the gods is often seen in Greek literature. Civil law and divine law were important ideals that cause opposition when they are juxtaposed. In the Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, the juxtaposition of civil law and divine law...

The concept of ‘answering back’ is a loose one which describes texts responding to other texts. It is connected to the idea of “the empire...writ[ing] back to a centre” (Ashcroft et al, p6) which is typically associated with a post-colonial text...

Greek tragedy played a large role in ancient Athenian culture. Every year, Athenians would gather together for the Dionysia, a festival to the god Dionysus. During this festival, plays from prominent poets would be performed in competition with...

Often, when we think of the word justice, legality comes to mind. Although justice is found in almost all laws, it is “exhausted in none” (Vecchio 176). I believe legality and justice are not necessarily synonymous for justice does not exist...

The crimes that Oedipus and Socrates are accused of in Oedipus the King by Sophocles and The Apology by Plato are intertwined with the boundaries society sets for its citizens in regard to laws that are just or injust. Crossing one of these set...

The idea of hubris is monumental in a plethora of Greek mythological works. In many ways the excessive pride of certain characters fuels their own destruction. This is certainly true with respect to the characters of Pentheus, Antigone, and...

The idea of hubris is monumental in a plethora of Greek mythological works. In many ways the excessive pride of certain characters fuels their own destruction. This is certainly true with respect to the characters of Pentheus, Antigone, and...

The theme of recognition plays an important role in Homer's The Odyssey and Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Two key recognition scenes are that between Odysseus and Penelope and that between Oedipus and Jocasta. Many differences can be found between...

The reader is told in Aristotle's Poetics that tragedy "arouses the emotions of pity and fear, wonder and awe" (The Poetics 10). To Aristotle, the best type of tragedy involves reversal of a situation, recognition from a character, and suffering....

"Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eye are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light,which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as the bodily...

Frank Kermode writes in his book The Genesis of Secrecy "We are most unwilling to accept mystery, what cannot be reduced to other and more intelligible forms. Yet that is what we find here: something irreducible, therefore perpetually to be...

Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is a play about one man's actions, both intentional and unintentional, and the necessary punishment for those actions. Regardless of whether he was manipulated by the gods or self-motivated, Oedipus must take...