Antigone: Moral Law vs. Political Law In the Theban play Antigone one of the central themes is the fight between what the state finds to be immoral or wrong and what an individual believes is the right thing to do. In the play, Antigone buries her dead brother and gives him funeral rights which the king, Creon, has decreed a crime. This conflict makes us question what power the state should have over people’s lives, what should be done when one believes a law is unjust and how far personal beliefs should be taken in making or changing laws. We find the author hinting at democratic ideals over the monarchs that were common in his time.
The readers are saddened because Antigone should not have died and she should be the queen of the kingdom instead of Creon. Even though Antigone dies in the end of the play, she does something important and meaningful before she dies. Her death is not a complete loss because she buried her brother and cleaned her conscience before she went to the underworld. "I should have praise and honor for what I have done." Creon tries to make things right in the end because the oracle tells him what he had done and the gods would be mad at him but is too
Creon’s tragic flaw is that he is to prideful. Creon insists on killing Antigone because she disobeyed his decree. When Haimon questions his decision, Creon replies by saying,” I’ll have no dealing with law breakers” (792, 35-36). Creon is explaining to Haimon that he will not deal with any rule breakers and that Antigone will be put to die along with her traitor of a brother. Creon’s pride is what leads to the death of Haimon, his son, and the Queen, his wife.
His fickle favor toward his servants, and not to mention his family, proves his inconsistency and instability. Although appointed by the gods, his reign has exposed the abused and misused privilege of representing the gods in his earthly position. King Creon’s irrational edict stated that any man who dares to bury Polyneices would suffer death by stoning. Is it a mere human’s prerogative to determine another man’s eternal fate? Because Antigone had nothing left to live for, while knowing the sentence of stoning, Antigone defied King Creon’s edict in order to fulfill her duty.
Antigone believes that without burying her brother he will not have a good after-life. Antigone even goes as far as burying him twice. Antigone is more admirable in that she is not selfish. She cared for her brother so much that she would go through all this trouble to give him a good after-life. She wanted to marry Haimon but sacrificed this to bury her brother.
He is very angry and sentences Antigone to death. Ismene asks to be executed along with her sister. But Antigone doesn't want her by her side. She insists that she alone buried the brother, so she alone will receive punishment and possible reward from the gods. As if things weren't complicated enough, Antigone has a boyfriend: Haemon, the son of Creon.
The Coward Oedipus Is “A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit”. This quote by Thomas Jefferson portrays Oedipus because throughout ‘Oedipus Rex’ he quarrels with everybody about he truth and becomes blind to it. By blinding himself Oedipus becomes a coward because he doesn’t want to face his crimes. It all started when Oedipus hears a dreadful prophecy that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother. He leaves Corinth and travels to Thebes, and on the way he unknowingly kills his father during a quarrel.
Antigone is more heroic than Creon, she takes risks and she is brave. When her own blood brother is sentenced to eternal suffering by being denied a burial, Antigone decides to break the law and risk her own life for her brother; “But I will bury him; and if I must die” (1.55) said Antigone, all for the sake of Polynesis’s eternal rest. Creon, on the other hand has no heroic traits apart from wanting the best for the people; he humiliates Antigone and her sister in public. This value and importance Creon has for the people’s opinion is destroyed when the people protest Antigone’s death, and he does not decide to follow what the people believe. Gentlemen, I beg you to observe these girls: One has just now lost her mind; the other, It seems has never had a mind at all (1.150) said Creon.
Blow!’ Although the play is set in a pagan setting, Lear prays to the gods to expose criminals and later throughout the play, for the wellbeing of Cordelia and it is through these cries of help that we can notice that no matter how much the king prayed for righteous justice to be served that his prayers remained unanswered. Proof of this is how he calls his daughters ‘pernicious’ in Act III Scene i and in Act III scene iii; also called ‘The Mock Trial Scene’, where Lear states: ‘I here take my oath before this honourable assembly, she [meaning Goneril] kicked the poor King her father.’ It is ironic how Lear thought that he was all-powerful in the first Act whereas now he is making an oath in the name of the gods that what he is stating is true and this shows the resignation he has towards the previous life he led. Meanwhile the gods’ injustice is also present in Gloucester’s subplot. Gloucester has always been a great believer of the gods and in the first act, when he reads Edmund’s forged letter he demonstrates this ‘these late eclipses in the sun
Suicide In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, suicide is an important and continuous theme throughout the play. Hamlet is the main character who contemplates the thought of suicide many different times throughout the play, since the murder of his father. Hamlet weighs the advantages of leaving his miserable life with the living, for possibly a better but unknown life with the dead “ He wishes the his living flesh would melt into nothingness”(Act 1,Scene 2). Hamlet seriously contemplates suicide, but decides against it, mainly because it is a mortal sin against God. Hamlet continues to say that most of humanity would commit suicide and escape the hardships of life, but do not because they are unsure of what awaits them in the after life.