What kind of character is antigone

Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Are you sure you want to remove bookConfirmation and any corresponding bookmarks?

My Preferences My Reading List. The Oedipus Trilogy Sophocles. Character Analysis Antigone. Adam Bede has been added to your Reading List! Her envy of Ismene is clear. Ismene is entirely of this world, the object of all men's desires. She fails, however, as such human pleasures are not meant for her.

Generally audiences have received Anouilh's Antigone as a figure for French Resistance, Antigone appearing as the young girl who rises up alone against state power.

Anouilh's adaptation strips Antigone's act of its moral, political, religious, and filial trappings, allowing it to emerge in all its gratuitousness.

In the end, Antigone's tragedy rests in her refusal to cede on her desire. Against all prohibitions and without any just cause, she will bury her brother to the point of her own death. As we learn in her confrontation with Creon, this insistence on her desire locates her in a line of tragic heroes, specifically that of Oedipus.

As for thee, Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven. She couldn't give a flip about laws of man, as represented by Creon. When these two willful characters collide, the clash isn't just symbolic of government vs. Throughout the play there are signs in the natural world that the gods are on the side of Antigone. For one, there are no footprints left beside the body when Antigone first puts dust on Polyneices. It's as if the earth itself is attempting to aid Antigone in her "crime.

The King dismisses the idea, saying the gods wouldn't want to help out somebody as terrible as Polyneices. Boy, is Creon wrong. We also see divine support for Antigone, when the storm rages outside of Thebes. The Sentry and friends go back to Polyneices's body and wipe away the soil that Antigone sprinkled there.

No sooner do they do this than the dust erupts from the earth and blots out the sky. In the center of the storm stands Antigone, wailing for the gods to destroy whoever has re-desecrated Polyneices's body. Seems like a pretty clear sign that Creon had better watch his back.

Antigone's divine symbolism is also seen when she is dragged before Creon just after the Chorus's famous "Ode to Man. As soon as they're done singing, Antigone is hauled in.

It's almost as if Antigone is the gods' answer to the Chorus's overweening pride. She is like a Fury, the gods' tool for revenge. Antigone is also a symbol of feminine revolt. She's nowhere near as radical as Euripides' Medea, who assassinates the royal family and murders her own children in the name of women. However, Antigone sacrifices her own life, trying to stand up to the patriarchal society in which she's imprisoned.

You can look at Antigone's clash with Creon as symbolic of the larger struggle of man vs. Ismene warns Antigone in the prologue that they are just weak women and can't stand up to the men-folk. Antigone proceeds anyway. When Antigone argues that her actions were justified by her loyalty to her family and to the gods, Creon dismisses her as an overemotional woman.

Antigone barely gives this notion the time of day, and stands before her accuser unrepentant. It's interesting that though Antigone is definitely a feminist symbol, she's spent her life being dutiful to men. Her childhood was spent following Oedipus around. Now she's giving her life for her fallen brother.

We wonder if, even though she's a strong independent woman, she needs these male presences for emotional sustenance. We also notice how cold she is with her sister Ismene.

Could it be that Antigone is a woman-hating woman? What's your take?