Yvy Truong

Okay, so maybe I’m not quite done here. I blame the coffee I had earlier.

I have to study for my Anthropology midterm but nope, not right now. Why? Because Antigone is why.

To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about Antigone. I can’t hate her but I can’t like her. I can’t define her but I can’t deny her existence. Even the play itself, I feel absolutely nothing for it. I don’t hate it, I don’t like it, but neither do I deny it’s substance.

To be or not to be.
To be is to think.
To think is to be.
To do is to be.
To be is to do.

Which is it?

Be nothing. It’s easier.

I don’t know what to make of Antigone… If I choose one opinion then I betray the existence of another opinion which undoubtedly has some truth in it. If I focus on one aspect of the play then I betray other aspects that are just as important and vital. Is Sophocles saying that we must choose or that we cannot choose for there are no options? (Choice being a very vague word here) But even so, there are parts in Antigone’s where choices are present… Right? Are we subjected to fate or is there free will?

There are two ways I’m starting to see the play as well:

One, being that the reader itself is being pulled into ambiguity and the readers responsibility is to make sense of it (almost how we are born into the world and it is up to us to make sense of it. It is up to us to live. Tuum Est – it is yours. Ha-ha.)

Two, being that when we first read the play, we can make sense of it and form our opinion but those opinions are not based on a solid foundation therefore it is less easily defined. Surly I had an opinion when I first read the text but the more I think about it, nothing makes sense and very little has substance or truth.

The Gods are mocking me right now.