Character Analysis: Comparing the life, death and its consequences of Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Creon - Essay Example

Character Analysis: Comparing the life, death and its consequences of Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Creon Jean Anouilh’s Antigone entails a story that revolves around a conflict, which is between Antigone, and idealist, and her rigid uncle. Her uncle is Creon and they have a serious conflict over Antigone’s bother proper burial. On the other hand, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad revolves around ivory business. This paper is based on cross-text character analysis of the play Antigone by Jean Anouilh and the story, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The analysis reflects on the comparison of life, death, as well as its consequences on Antigone as an opposing subject to her uncle, Creon, as well as the perspective of Mr. Kurtz in the novel Heart of Darkness. The main characters in the play are Antigone and Creon while in the novel, Charles Mallow is the main character, who gets obsessed with Mr. Kurtz after travelling to Central Africa. The two characters are in constant conflict in the play but in the novel, Mallow seem to be obsessed with Kurtz. The three characters, Antigone, Creon and Kurtz can be compared and contrasted at the same time. Basically, their contrasting characters come from the idealist and rigid nature of Antigone and Creon respectively; while the idea of Kurtz is to influence the people of Congo to gain what he want. His intention is to make as much money as possible from ivory, obtained from this Congo Free State. The play is a tragedy especially given that it represents its actions, which are serious, complete, and represents the actions in beautiful acted speeches. Antigone play is basically a model tragedy since it includes both pain and sorrow. These emotions are expressed differently by various characters, especially the main characters. In the novel, the concept is a bit different. Kurtz trades in ivory having been sent by a Belgium company to this African nation (Conrad, pg12). Given the use of superior technology, he wins the heart of many people thereby being able to make himself a demigod of the tribes that surrounded his station. This way he is able to influence them into gathering huge quantities of ivory. He greatly becomes known in the region due to his superiority as well as the nature of his trade. His actions prove that he believes in living a happy life just like Creon in Antigone. Unlike Antigone, Kurtz need to struggle by all means in order to live a happy life (Conrad, pg.87). He tries to achieve this to an extent of tricking Africans using his technology in order to get what he wants. His actions are very realistic just like the case of Creon. He is also daring whenever trying to live a good life. Conrad shows this when his novel says, “The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle.” (pg.87).This way, he contradicts with the idea of preferring death instead of living an ethical way of life that is characterized by poverty. Unlike the case of Antigone, who believed on the gods as the determinants of one’s destinies, Kurtz is ready to exploit the people in order to achieve his mission. He is further very talented in various aspects, which could also be influencing factors to the people of Congo. In the case of the play, there is a contrast between the characters of Antigone and Creon, Creon seems to be different in character from Antigone’s idealistic nature. He hardly learns a lesson from the accusatory behavior of Oedipus. Instead of learning from such a case and knowing the consequence of the life practiced by Oedipus, he adapts the personality trait of Oedipus. The trait is generally considered as bad and unethical. Creon accuses anyone trying to advise him of practicing betrayal behaviors. This mainly happens in the case of Antigone. In the case of Oedipus, Creon is accused falsely of trying to attempting to take control of the throne. This accusation comes from Oedipus (Bujold). Creon is seen within different contexts in the case of Oedipus as compared to the Antigone. It seems that in Oedipus, Creon wanted nothing more than helping Oedipus to ride the city of the plagues, which the gods were placing on them. Typically, the main idea in the play is centered within the conflicts between Creon and Antigone. Antigone and Creon are protagonists in terms or justice and morale. While the actions of Antigone are based on errors or love, the actions of Creon have their basis on pride, hubris, and state laws. Tragedy seems to dominate the entire drama. In that beginning of the story, Polynices and Eteocles’s fight for the Thebes throne in a battle. These two characters are brothers but still get into a serious fight to win the throne. The two brothers kill one another despite their brotherhood. The most sorrowful issue is that the fight for good life in the throne leads to a disastrous situation for the two brothers and the entire kingdom as well. The two brothers’ crave for good life associated with power renders them dead. Instead of achieving what they desired, the two brothers kill each other thereby leaving the kingdom of Thebes with no king. Creon, the uncle to the two brothers takes over leadership by assuming the king’s position. Creon seems to be in a hurry of exercising his power. Under Creon’s first decree as the king, he declares that nobody would be given the chance or allowance of burying Polynices because he had brought an army from outside, specifically from Argos, in order to fight against Eteocles in Thebes’s kingdom (Bujold). Antigone, Eteocles’s sister, and Polynices hardly agree with the decree of Creon and provide Polynices with a proper burial. The proper burial is initiated as a way of honoring the god even under the decree of Creon. This action triggers the battle between Creon and Antigone. These two seem to have hardly learned from the actions of the two brothers, which consequently contributed to their deaths. Antigone’s character is rigid and very stubborn, which contradicts the case of Kurtz. Kurtz hardly wants to create any conflict with his immediate society but rather looks for ways of wining them to achieve his interest. Conversely, the conflict between Creon and Antigone turns out to be the main idea of the drama (Bujold). Their conflicts are caused by contradicting ideas and interests. Kurtz does not want to create enemies, but rather he uses his eloquence, ambitions, and charisma to achieve greatness. He is very realistic in all what is doing unlike Antigone. In the play, Antigone has completely varying views of justice from the king. Based on the perspective of Creon, justice needs to be given according to state laws. Antigone is conversely against this view. Antigone considered justice to be set based on the gods’ laws. Antigone seems to appeal to the kind of justice, “…that dwells with the gods below,” (Bujold). Her life is fully based on the gods to an extent that she is completely ready for death, which is her fate. Death according to Antigone is the fate of a person’s life and the gods have control over this fate. Her ideology of justice according to the laws of the gods is reflected in the case of the two brothers who die while battling against each other to win the throne of Themes. The idea of the gods does not exist in the ideas of Kurtz, but the people around his station praise him like one. Although he does not demand power from the people, he uses various techniques and talents to attract the people’s attention. He strongly believes in happy life, which can only be achieved by being in good terms with the people (Conrad). Antigone appears to be completely unreasonable as well as insensible. She strongly insist that justice is sometimes more important than those laws set by man. She defines her laws. Consequently, she has to suffer the effects of attempting to disobey the state laws. She even makes hardly any efforts in concealing her deeds. Instead, she challenges the right of Creon to create laws, which contradict the gods’ will. Antigone is idealistic character in this case but she faces the stubbornness of Creon. Creon on the other hand is a typical authority figure. He is very rigid and completely inflexible in admitting his mistakes as well as errors in his judgment. He maintains this rigidity until too late. Creon sets the state laws higher as compared to the gods’ laws as evidenced through the denial of a decent burial to Polynices, but Antigone understands that she has to please the gods through a decent burial to Polynices. The two characters struggle each other in terms of both the laws, and on family matters. Antigone understands the fates of life and the consequences of certain actions on people’s life based on the death of her two brothers. She further tries all her best in order to avoid losing the respect for her family as well as respect for the gods. To achieve this goal and ideology, she acts against Creon’s creed of giving indecent burial to Polynices. Conversely, the aspect of respect to family name and the gods does not exist. Even given that Antigone is his own niece, he hardly allows the family relationship to affect his decisions whenever it comes to dealing with Antigone. According to the play, Creon even swears that he would punish Antigone even given that she is his own “…sister’s child or closer in blood” (Bujold). He only had one role to achieve. His main job in this case was to offer protection as well as serving the people of his territory of Thebes as best as he could. In doing his tasks, he strongly believed in upholding the state laws. He also held to himself that given a situation whereby he would fail to punish Antigone, he would appear to be a weak ruler to his people. Given that he is really related to her, Creon had to initiate the necessary punishment to Antigone. This action, according to his views, would give the people of Thebes and impression of him a great and powerful king. Conversely, Antigone believes that she has to act under the laws of the gods and that life has its fate on her life. Perhaps this view gives her the strength to react against Creon, the new king. Antigone is unlike her sister, Ismene, who refuses to disobey the laws of Creon by assisting Antigone in burying their brother Polynices. In this case, Ismene claims that, “I do them no dishonor, but to defy the city, I have no strength for that.” She even goes ahead to plead with Antigone so that she could change her mind. The effort of Ismene to urge Antigone to obey the king is because she hardly has any other family other than Antigone as the only family member in her support. According to the play, Ismene asks, “…how can I live without her” (Bujold)? It comes that the conflict between Creon and Antigone also leads to consequences on other people’s life. Ismene now feels insecure due to the probability of losing even her sister Antigone as her only remaining family member. The conflict between Antigone and Creon has lead to a great disagreement between Antigone and her sister (Bujold). The disagreements between them are in terms of their different ideologies. Antigone’s views and actions are based on idealism whereby she believes that her actions would please the gods and that she is acting according to the laws of the gods. Conversely, Ismene’s views and actions are based on realism because she thinks from the perspective of facing punishment if she or her sister acts against the state laws. Antigone believes that she can only face punishment if it was the will of the gods. She is even ready to face death as one of the many fates of life (Bujold). At some point, Antigone tries to escape fate like her famous father did. Her fate in this case is however not like the Oedipus’s singular individualized fate. The author seems to recreate the story of Antigone in order to make her the symbol of a universal fate as well as in line with various and contemporary philosophical thoughts. In the case of Oedipus, Oedipus faces his fate mainly at Delphi, from the Oracle. He faces the fate, upon which this tragedy hinges. Despite that she is hardly told about her fate, Antigone knows and understands her fate clearly. The transfer of the story to the modern times is meant to undercut its mystery. In this case, it seems that the story has significantly been reduced to a mere drama. The basic story has no much mystery however especially given that tragedies need not to have mysteries. Tragedy for the modern world’s people is hardly determined by pressure from the gods. Instead, Creon is the typical leader and force for the modern world (Bujold). The play depicts aspect like the laws, which control most people in terms of their actions as compared to the ideologies of spiritual forces in traditions or even in modern religious conceptions. Actions of people are hardly determined by the will of individuals, which upsets any establishments of social order. Instead, the actions are determined by the individual will’s limitations. When compared to the written scripts, the film play was meant to bring out a completely different view. In the modern world, rituals are not a common practice. While some people may believe that their lives are fully controlled by the gods, this ideology turns out to be wrong because Anouilh depicts heads of states to have control over the lives of people. Antigone is filled with the deception as the clashes of her interest like the case of the gods ordained within works by ancient Greeks. Life actions such as power, lies, and corruption lead people to tragedy. Life by itself seems to be worse than death among some people due to the hurls associated with it. Even Antigone seems to choose death over life by strongly contradicting Creon. Her actions seem to be based on ignorance but she is determined to face anything even the fate of death. She also believes that her brothers died as honorable death and therefore they deserve honorable burial ceremonies. Creon on the other hand believes that they deserved it but they never considered the consequence of their actions. Good life according to the two brothers is something that anyone can fight for. This view and their urge to experience the good aspects of life such as power and wealth among other aspects made them fight against each other in a battle. Like many other individuals, these two brothers knew the consequences of their life actions. Antigone conversely does not want to understand the realities of life. She instead wants to go against the rule of the state laws even with a clear understanding of the possible repercussions. She is like many individuals living in the modern world who are willing to go against all powerful regulations and restrictions against certain actions in the society. She chooses death over life being strongly confronting the law, the king/ leaders, and acting ignorantly. Conversely, Creon understands the importance of living a good life and is willing to protect his people as much as he could. To him, good life starts with understanding the realities of life (Bujold,132). This idea is also expressed by Kurtz. He knows how he could act in order to manipulate The same perspective is also exercised by Ismene, Antigone’s sister who tries to make her change her mind by being ignorant on the consequences of her ideological decisions and actions. Creon on the other hand is tries to complacence and compromise with the consequences of life. To him, life is always good as compared to death. He strongly believes that life is nothing other than being happy. Contrary, Antigone seems to despise this ideology. Antigone’s decision to die is triggers by the complacent idea of Creon of gaining happiness. Antigone can be said to have been bent on suicide especially from her insisting case as well as her questionable motives. Her tough decision to choose death over life is hardly based on the realities of life. She is very demanding and stubborn. She strongly despises those people who always agreed to the forces of life especially by learning to comply with unfair situations caused by leadership practices. While Creon and Ismene stick by the idea of life and happiness, Antigone and her father are against this idea. Even before his death, Oedipus depicted the same character as Antigone, her daughter. The play shows serious contradiction with some people deciding to live a good life by all means while other like Antigone are choosing death over this kind of life, in which people can be happy by only exercising bad practices. For the case of Kurtz, good life is a necessity to him and he is ready to achieve it by all means. At least, he is not ready to die like Antigone in the play. He is such a talented character whose life is full of trial and error as a way of striving to achieve the best possible in life. To Antigone, life is a matter of fate, which is decided by the gods. She finds it easier to die than achieve in life through the wrong means in an attempt to impress the gods. In the two texts, those acting on the basis of reality are ready to do anything to have good life while ideologists avoid realities thereby facing death. Works Cited Antigone. Dir. Genevieve Bujold. Perf. Stacy Keach and Fritz Weaver. 1974. Film. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Planet PDF, 1990. Print. Read More