Antigone's Everlasting Conflict

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Antigone's Everlasting Conflict
A Comparison between a Legendary Tragedy and a Modern Drama
Before 445 B.C Sophocles wrote a now historically famous tragedy entitled Antigone. In 2010 director Debra Granik released a drama adapted from Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name “Winter’s Bone”; this movie was praised by A.O Scott who is a prominent leader of film critique as “the modern day Antigone”. Overall the comparison made is extremely accurate; this comparison is drawn based on the movie and tragedy’s similar conflict and the reaction of the female protagonist throughout the respective stories. These observations can be taken directly from each narrative’s text and are important to recognize these conflicts from Antigone being used as we can as readers we can see that people in seemingly powerless positions taking control of their life and challenging the status qua in society, which are timeless conflicts.
Now, the character Antigone is a woman in a very patriarchal society, ancient Greece was not a place where women could easily undermine a man's authority. In the beginning of the story we are given a tragic introduction in which both of Antigone's brothers have been slain fighting against each other in a brutal conflict, leaving herself as the last of her family. The now king of Thebes, Creon rules over where Antigone resides and has outlawed anyone from giving the proper burial rites to the brother of Antigone that was fighting against Thebes. Antigone defies the rule of the society around her and gives her brother the burial that will allow him to continue to the afterlife, despite the costs which drive her to commit suicide while exiled. Her self-sacrifice in the face of apparent doom and outcast is what makes the story so meaningful and is made even more so by the fact that she is a woman, something that makes her go from seeming absurd in her actions

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