Tag: Antigone

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Antigone’s Claim and Other Nonsensical Thoughts, A Second Edit

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.

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Antigone’s Claim and Other Nonsensical Thoughts, An Edit

Someone help me, I can’t stop thinking about Antigone and Antigone’s Claim. I can’t seem to put everything on one post because once I publish something, another thing pops up.

 

Damn you, Sophocles. Damn you.

 

Right now I’m thinking about Sophocles’s intention when writing the play, because I think if I figure that out (or make some sense of it), I’ll understand the play as a whole. But here’s the thing: philosophers are cheeky bastards.

 

Right now I think I’m focusing too much on Antigone and not Sophocles’s intent when writing Antigone. I wish I knew his intentions. Sure, you can say that she acts upon family responsibility but something about it makes me think that she doesn’t really belong to a family any more. She and Ismene are orphans, and even so they are more separated when Antigone disowns Ismene. Perhaps Antigone is acting to retrieve back her family? I think it was mentioned in seminar last week how Antigone wishes to die so she can go back to her family.

 

And I keep thinking as to why Antigone died. I want to think that she died because she’s just crazy, but the strings that are attached to her makes me think that there has to be more. I’m starting to think that because of the ambiguity that has differentiated her also was the reason she chose death.  Antigone didn’t have anything that would define her as human or made her feel human. I believe that humans have to attach themselves to something to make them feel alive. From Camus,

“Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to…”

 

And now if that is the case, that Antigone killed herself because her surroundings did not make any sense, what is it that Sophocles is saying? As humans, do we need to attach ourselves in order to be human and to feel like we are alive? If that is the case, is that why we go to school, make friends, attach meaning to events, go to work, and fall in love? Is it something we choose to do or must we do it to be defined as human?

 

I think it was also mentioned in lecture that in order to have kinship, it must be active. Events have no meaning unless we place meaning there. Otherwise, we disassociate ourselves from it. It no longer matters.

 

And now back to the thought about Sophocles’s philosophy which focus more on the individual than society…. If humans individually desire meaning through kinship and events and actively pursue it, than how does that play in society? Does the individual seek their own meaning or do humans merely reflect the wants and desire of society? (does that question make sense?)

 

DAMN YOU DEAD PHILOSOPHERS, ARISE FROM THE ASHES AND PROCLAIM YOURSELF. ANSWER MY QUESTIONS AND MAKE SENSE OF YOUR CHILDISH FOLLIES. “I DO NOT DENY MY DEED”, LIKE REALLY? REALLY? OK, I am so done. So done right now.

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Antigone’s Claim and Other Nonsensical Thoughts

Truth be told, I didn’t read all of Antigone’s Claim because I found it quite dry. However, after today’s lecture I think I’ll give it another go (but that means I have to juggle between rereading Antigone for the essay, Antigone’s Claim, and Dr. Faustus).  Perhaps the second time around I’ll be able to get through the text and feel more interested.

 

So for this, I’ll just go on about not the text itself, but what I learned in lecture.

 

I found it interesting how Jill Fellows pointed out how when we focus on one aspect of the play, something else falls into ambiguity. I can kind of understand what she means because I remember in the last two seminars we had last week, when we would discuss a certain aspect of the play, something else would fall apart and when we tried to pick up those pieces, something else didn’t make sense. At one point, I would see Antigone as a strong character but at another, I would find her weak. Some things would make sense, but when the conversation progressed into something else, it contradicted what used to make sense.

 

Am I making sense?

 

So the structure of the play cannot be clearly pin-pointed, and that idea is reiterated when looking at Antigone as a character. Again, as earlier said in the lecture, Antigone does not fit the role of the woman nor does she fit in the role of a man.

 

Now this reminds me of two quotations:

“She is not of the human but speaks its language. Prohibited from action, she nevertheless acts, and her act is hardly a simple assimilation to an existing norm.” (Butler, 82)

 

and

 

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath out notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast of a god” – Aristotle (taken from Robert Crawford’s lecture slides)

Is Antigone apart of society? If a ship is metaphorical to the polis, what part of the ship is she?

From the two passages that I just quoted, it seems as thought Antigone cannot be defined as human and neither is she a part of society. Could that be perhaps the reason why she had to die? That it was essential for her to die because there was no way for her to be defined? She is an island onto herself but is it by nature or is it because of the circumstances?

I’m also looking back on my blog post from last week and I mentioned how Antigone was interesting because Sophocles shows us the struggle between individual wants and needs versus the polis and society. There is no clear answer to what is more triumphant, society or the individual, because remember, Kreon is the state and he is later subjected to a fate just as confusing and bleak as Antigone’s fate once was (before she killed herself)

And now I’m in a tangled mess of thoughts but I have a few questions….

What is it that defines us as human?

What could Antigone have done? What action could she have taken?

Why did Antigone have to die?

Why doesn’t this play make sense?

Am I making sense?

What is life?

Life?

And with that, I am very tired now.

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Antigone and Other Nonsensical Thoughts

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.

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