Antigone and Other Nonsensical Thoughts
by Yvy Truong
First of all, I’d like to say congratulations to everyone who has written and handed in their first Arts One paper.
Yesterday night marked the first paper that I will write for University and to me, I think it marks the beginning of my University career.
When I first read Antigone, I was surprised that Antigone was a woman and not a man. I thought it was shocking that the story of a woman would intertwine so strongly in an Ancient Greek play. I was totally expecting another story of old pontificating white men that realize the bitterness of the human condition or whatever and whatnot (as you can see, I am a bit jaded from after reading Gorgias).
In the lecture today, Crawford mentioned the discrepancy between nature and law. I remember in one of the seminars after reading Gorgias, we were questioning whether laws were made in our nature or if laws were to protect us from our nature. I’m not too sure which one is which but in Antigone, there is something so rich about the characters and their wants that it is such a relief to read after reading Gorgias. Gorgias really does personify the kind of culture Ancient Greece was. It was a public life where whatever was seen in public was a representation of the whole. There was no difference between ones private life and the life of the public. Whereas in Antigone, there are wants and needs of all the different characters (and yes, it really goes feel like a Shakespearean play).
The idea that Sophocles’ approach to philosophy and writing (more on human emotion, wants, needs, etc.,) is also interesting as well. It reminds me of the literary transition from the Age of Enlightenment to Romanticism (A-ha! Yet another repetition that follows our theme of Remake/Remodel).
If I have anything more to say, I’ll make an edit later but I think I have to go through the lecture notes again.
I totally thought that Antigone was going to be a male too!
Good point that there is so much richness in the characters here, and yes, it’s very different from Gorgias in that respect! Of course, Gorgias isn’t really meant as a play, more of a philosophical dialogue, so I suppose it’s not surprising that there isn’t much in the way of character development. It is amazing, though, as another student from the class noted, that you do get a good sense of the characters from such a sort play, and with some of them saying so few words.
You might be surprised to find that Plato, in the Republic also spoke of women as potentially being strong. He thought women, like men, could be equally good at being soldiers and rulers. A very unusual claim in his day!