The Greatest Masterpieces of the Greek Philosopher - Essay Example

Professor Name Institution, course number Date Sophocles’s Antigone as a paradigm of the idea of tragedy “Antigone” is a tragedy of ancient Greece play writer Sophocles. It is written on the mythological manner and reveals one of the main conflict, peculiar for that period of time - the contradiction between the laws of the generation and state. The aim of this work is to reveal the signs, which make the play a paradigm of the idea of tragedy and analyze them. The philosophical analysis of the tragedy "Antigone" is impossible without the understanding of the notion of "tragic". The concept of the tragedy goes beyond literature, and has not only aesthetic but also a universal and philosophical sense. Firstly, we should understand that the notion of tragedy concerns only a human being. This concept cannot be devoted to the natural phenomena. It can face various kinds of devastating disasters, but their consequences are evaluated as a tragic only in relation to their emergence in peoples lives. Tragedy always involves some conflicts in human relationships. It characterizes the irresolvable question, which always ends with the loss of some significant life values ​​for the participants of the conflict, or even the destruction of their personality. Every person is mortal. Moreover, any individual accepts it as a fact and does not consider it as a tragedy. Death is only one of the manifestations of life - the law of nature. Tragic conflicts arise when people fail in their truly human manifestations, asserting themselves as free and rational beings. The spiritual dimension of human life is the only arena in which the tragedy takes place. The works of Sophocles were based on the myths of ancient Greece. The play “Antigone” is often compared with the myth about Oedipus. The plot of the tragedy is not complicated. Its main character Antigone (the daughter of king Oedipus), despite the decree of Creon (the legitimate ruler of Thebes), performs funeral rites over the body of one of her fallen brothers Polynices, who led foreign troops to Thebes and betrayed the interests of his native city. As a result, Creon condemns Antigone to a painful punishment, commanding to immure her in one of the caves. Antigone refuses to accept such sentence and commits suicide. Antigones death entailed the suicide of her fiancé Haemon (Creons son). His mother Eurydice could not stand the sorrow and dies as well. These misfortunes made Creon recognize his miserableness and humble before the gods. Sophocles developed the plot of the original myth, as it was necessary for the disclosure of the tragic actions. He did not paraphrase the ready content. Among Sophocles’s tragedies, "Antigone" is the most famous and yet the most challenging work. The literary critics, philosophers and writers constantly argue about the content and meaning of this work of art, creating their own versions based on the story of "Antigone". The disagreement is primarily arise from the treatment of the conflict, which is the basis of the tragedy. The conflict in the play is complex. It develops in various dimensions and have a very deceptive character. When it seems that the situation is clarified, and the truth is on the side of one of the conflicting forces, Sophocles finds the arguments in favor of the opposite side and makes the reader to reject his initial judgments. There is no answer to the question of who is wrong or right in the play. In the final part of the tragedy, all participants of the conflict fail, and we cannot highlight the idea of fought evil or the triumph of good. Substantially all heroes of the play "Antigone" are drawn into the conflict, developed in the tragedy. It is important to understand that this is not a conflict of people, but the contradiction of principles and ideas. However, the analysis of the characters and their positions in the conflict reveals the main component of the plot and finds out the essence of the play. Each of the main heroes of the tragedy expresses his own understanding of what happens as well as his attitude and the nature of the participation in it. Thus, Antigone declares and uncompromisingly defends her right to execute her debt in relation to her dead brother and bury his body, following all the tradition rites, which contradicts the decree of Creon, prohibiting the bury of the traitor. From the beginning of the play, Creon declares his determination to defend the interests of the state, which are of undeniable priority for him as a king, not excluding the interests of his own family. One more important character of the play is Tiresias, the blind seer, who strongly protects the divine precepts, fearlessly accusing Creon in their violation, incurring the wrath of the ruler. The other characters of the drama occupy less consistent and independent position. Haemon, Creons son, at first glance, supports the position of his father, but in order to protect the interests of the state convinces him to cancel the accepted decisions in respect to Antigone and the burial of Polynices, explaining it by the need to win the favor of citizens of Thebes, unhappy with the activities of the new king. However, having met a resolute refusal of Creon, he takes the side of Antigone and goes against the decisions of his father. Ismene and Eurydice are the minor characters, created by the author in order to set off the events of the play. Ismene is represented as a braveness of Antigone and brutality of Creon, while Eurydice is a horror of reckoning, faced by Creon in the end of the play. Thus, we have three forces, which constitute a conflict of the tragedy: the state, personified by Creon, gender and values ​​defended by Antigone and the will of the gods, protected by Tiresias. However, the conflict is not a contradiction of the different opinions, but the clash of opposite sides. The meaning of the original work of art, as well as the creation of any culture is beyond the scope of its temporal and spiritual horizon. Consequently, the subsequent generations see it as something different and deeper than contemporary version of the play. In ancient times, Sophocless "Antigone" was accepted as a tragic collision of a person with the powerful gods. The decision of Creon broke the ancient law of Olympian gods, which required to respect the right of relatives to bury their family members. Creon and Antigone are both victims of the destiny, and their direct confrontation in the tragedy remarkably enhances the intensity of the events. For the audience, they are both wrong in their human pride. However, the fault of Antigone is approved. She does not possess the feature of humility, appropriate for the women of that time, but defends the religious precepts, which are close and understandable by the reader. Creon, in his turn, acts on his own behalf, using the possibilities, provided by his power. The strength of Creon, however, is not as important for the Greeks as the religion coalesced with the legendary and historical glory of the people. In the process of reading, we feel that, Sophocles has a sympathy for the image of Antigone and antipathy for Creon, transmitting these emotions to the reader and viewer. The plays of Sophocles, written in the form of mythological story, are very interesting for both ordinary people and modern scientists and continue to worry hearts of the audience, encouraging people to serious thoughts. Time opened the notion of eternal for Sophocles and made ​​his drama immortal. This content does not refer to the eternal gods, as the Greeks thought, but to the ordinary people. Time made Antigone and Creon the real heroes of the tragedy. Family or the state, private interests of the common good, individual freedom or the law, love or duty are the main choices, which face not only the characters of Sophocless tragedy, but every person. This choice is insoluble, because all these values are equally important for a person. The heroes of Sophocles could not find a general solution of the problems and come to unity, although each of them unconsciously felt that there was the basis for such unity, because they derived their knowledge from a common source - the divine truth. Antigone protects the customs, established by gods, while Creon refers to the laws established by the royal power. It would be wrong to seek the reasons of the conflict in the personal features of the characters. However, it is widely practiced by the critics to present a young, loving and touching Antigone as a victim of the cruel, overbearing and tyrannical Creon. The question of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the main characters of the play "Antigone" is controversial. In the course of the actions in the tragedy, both antipodes manifest themselves not in the best light. Sophocles gave a striking similarity to the opposite positions of Antigone and Creon. Both characters are proud, willful, uncompromising, passionate, and miserable in the final. The point is not in the specificity of the heroes, and in the degree of the maturity of defense of their ideas, as well as in the peculiarities of the spirit of the culture to which they both belong. Antigone defends the rights of her family. She is offended by the fact, that her close relative is condemned to such a shameful and painful fate. However, family for her is only the same blood and unity of interests, nothing more. Antigone tries to keep the order in the family relations and insert the human love in it. She is the only one, who does not leave her father, and accompanies him in his wanderings, brightening his death by her presence. She tries to save, not the honor, but at least the soul of her dead brother. No wander, that this image evokes the sympathy of the auditory. Antigone fairly accuses Creon of tyranny, but the truth is that he had no other way to realize the authority, as the state law was not developed in that period of time. Despotism and apparent inhumanity of Creon does not express the depravity of his nature, but is the necessary feature of the unlawful state. There is no presence of gods in the tragedy. However, they are represented as invisible characters of the play, influencing the perception of it by the reader or viewer. The whole final of the tragedy is marked by a silent divine intervention, which is above the human being and represented as a terrible and at the same fair image of human fate. It punishes all participants of the play for their irreconcilable and arrogant character. Analyzing the play, we can conclude that, it contains a paradigm of the tragedy, represented by the unhappy fate of all its characters. The feeling of sorrow and sadness, which follow the whole play, makes the reader feel pity for the cogency of the human destiny and its miserableness, despite the status and position of the person in the world. The play “Antigone” is definitely one of the greatest masterpieces of the Greek philosopher, arising the eternal questions and protecting the life values of people. Works cited Sophocles. Antigone. Clayton: Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics, 2005. Print Read More