Comparing To Kill a Mockingbird and Antigone

650 Words3 Pages
Dogs and Disease Antigone, a Greek tragedy, by Sophocles and To Kill a Mockingbird, a story of prejudice and shedding innocence, by Harper Lee are ironically similar in one way or another. The sad tale of Antigone tells the story of a death-obsessed woman who sacrifices her life, but not her pride, for her brother’s burial. Her uncles curse has spread through the city and is steadily getting worse has he does more and more prideful acts. The curse overtakes the city; even the innocent and the dogs cannot escape it. The story of To Kill a Mockingbird on the other hand, tells about the lives of two children growing up in a town engulfed with racism, where only a few can see the true evil of racism. The people of the town are so blind to the harshness of the discrimination they are putting out towards black people that even the symbol of a mad dog cannot remove their blindfold. The dogs in both stories are corrupted with the curses of the towns they reside in. Because of Antigone’s Uncle, Creon the King of Thebes, the city’s curse has made the one reliable source—the god’s—disappear almost all together. The god’s “are deaf when [they] pray to them…the sky is deaf”(Ant. 1193,1200). They don’t answer them and give the people nothing. The city—people and animals alike—is infected with the plague Creon has selfishly given it. Creon refuses to give Polyneices a proper burial because he believes that he is a traitor, sentenced Antigone to death, and “[has] trampled on God’s right”(Ant. 1187). However, this has upset Zeus; Creon has “kept from the god’s below the child that is theirs”(Ant. 1194). There is no way to escape the curse; even the dogs have become infected. Creon is warned over and over about what his prideful acts are doing to the city, you [Creon] have brought
This new calamity upon us. Our hearths and altars
Are stained with the corruption of dogs…
That
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