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Law

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Jan 9, 2024

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Group Discussion: Sophocles’ Antigone II WHUM 101 | CCNY, CUNY | Tyson Ward, Instructor 1. Analyze Antigone’s character and motivations as a tragic hero, applying Aristotle’s terminology. From her point of view, what is she trying to do by consecrating Polynices’ body in defiance of King Creon? What is Antigone’s hamartia, the understandable flaw / error that leads to catastrophe? When are we supposed to feel catharsis for Antigone, and do you actually feel it? 2. Analyze Creon’s character and motivations, treating him as the tragic hero of the play and applying Aristotle’s terminology. From his point of view, what is Creon trying to do by forbidding the burial of Polynices? What is Creon’s hamartia, which makes him resist the advice of Haemon and Tiresias? When is the audience supposed to feel catharsis for Creon, and do you actually feel pity and fear for him in his loss? 3. At least in his public statements early in the play, Creon seems to believe he acts, not only in his own interest as tyrant, but also in the public interest. “Only while [our country] voyages true on course,” he declares as he issues his edict against Polynices’ burial, “can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself. / Such are my standards. They make our city great” (212-214). When Antigone claims that “These citizens here would all agree, / they would praise me too / if their lips weren’t locked in fear,” Creon responds, “You alone, of all peoples in Thebes, see things that way” (563-565, 568-569). And later Creon ignores Haemon’s account of “the murmurs in the dark, / the way the city mourns for this young girl” (775-776). The chorus itself, which is meant to express the concerns and emotions of the people at large, rarely comments on Antigone’s stand directly, though if Haemon is correct then they may be suppressing themselves. Where do you think popular opinion in Thebes lies, with Creon or with Antigone? If Haemon and Antigone had inspired an uprising against Creon, would they have been in the right? 4. What significance / symbolism is present in Haemon’s suicide, as described by a messenger at lines 1327-1371? As you discuss this, compare the chorus on love at 879-899 to the advice on “reason” Haemon gives his father at 764-794. 5. In Antigone’s final speech, she explains her loyalty to Polynices in a way that remains controversial to critics, even to the point where some question whether Sophocles really wrote these lines: Never, I tell you, If I had been the mother of children Or if my husband died, exposed and rotting— I’d never have taken this ordeal upon myself, Never defied our people’s will. What law, You ask, do I satisfy with what I say? A husband dead, there might have been another. A child by another too, if I had lost the first. But mother and father both lost in the halls of Death, No brother could ever spring to light again. For this law alone I held you [, Polynices,] first in honor. [995-1005] This speech sparks controversy because it seems to conflict with Antigone’s earlier pronouncements about honoring the laws of the Gods. The feminist critic Carol Gilligan argues that Antigone, by grounding her principles of right and wrong in immediate family bonds, represents an alternative form of morality, “the ethics of care,” which counters Creon’s public order of “men who live by law” and “owe their lives to discipline…never to be rated / inferior to a woman” (756-761). On the other hand, psychoanalytical critic Jacques Lacan famously argued that, deep down, Antigone is not operating on principle, but following a personal death wish. What is your view of Antigone’s motivation for defying Creon in the face of certain death?
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