Antigone Essay Research Paper Antigoneby Sophocles442 BCApplause — страница 3

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the Gods are commanding her to bury her brother. Antigone can then accomplish two goals at once: gaining popularity among the dead, and obeying God’s commands. Thus, Antigone could be either challenging Creon’s authority like a feminist would, or she could have more selfish intentions, or a combination of both. Antigone shows a feminist mentality in her search for popularity among others. One essential characteristic of a person who advocates equal rights, and largely, a change in the status quo, is that he needs widespread popular support. Antigone seeks support several times. To begin with, she asks for her crime to be made public. She thereby is searching for support from the public. Antigone knows that if the public is unaware of her crime, she can not gather their

sympathies and their support. Additionally, Antigone tries to gather the Chorus’s support prior to her death. Lastly, when she is desperate, she abandons all previous attempts at popularity and cries for sympathy from anyone who would listen. She attempts to gather peoples’ support and to be a martyr. Martyrdom and civil rights movements (i.e. feminism) often go hand in hand. Antigone’s strong will is the last way she demonstrates characteristics of feminists. Antigone did not run from her death sentence and that suggests an inherent braveness to Antigone, if not an inherent stupidity. Of course, her feminism may just be a way through which her bullheadedness manifests itself. Antigone’s strong belief in her correctness causes her downfall. These characteristics combine

to make Antigone appear to be a feminist long before her time. In any event, Antigone makes an interesting and varied character to consider. Monolog I dared. It was not God’s proclamation. That final Justice that rules the world below make now such laws. Your edict, King, was strong, but all your strength is weakness itself against the immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were, and shall be, operative for ever, beyond man utterly. I knew I must die, even without your decree I am only mortal. And if I must die now, before it is my time to die, surely this is no hardship: can anyone living, as I live, with evil all about me, think death less than a friend: This death of mine is of no importance; but if I had left my brother lying in death unburied, I

should have suffered. Now I do not. You smile at me. Ah, Creon, think me a fool, if you like; but it may well be that a fool convicts me of folly.