What are the larger issues behind the conflicting positions of both Creonand Antigone? Is either person or position clearly wrong?

What will be an ideal response?



  • Charles Paul Segal views the clash between Creon and Antigone as the result of two conflicting worldviews— one female, the other male:



It is again among the tragic paradoxes of Antigone’s position that she who accepts the absolutes of death has a far fuller sense of the complexities of life. Creon, who lacks a true “reverence” for the gods, the powers beyond human life, also lacks a deep awareness of the complexities within the human realm. Hence he tends to see the world in terms of harshly opposed categories, right and wrong, reason and folly, youth and age, male and female. He scornfully joins old age with foolishness in speaking to the chorus (267–68) and refuses to listen to his son’s advice because he is younger (684–85) . . .
All these categories imply the relation of superior and inferior, stronger and weaker. This highly structured and aggressive view of the world Creon expresses perhaps most strikingly in repeatedly formulating the conflict between Antigone and himself in terms of the woman trying to conquer the man. He sees in Antigone a challenge to his whole way of living and his basic attitudes toward the world. And of course he is right, for Antigone’s full acceptance of her womanly nature, her absolute valuation of the bonds of blood and affection, is a total denial of Creon’s obsessively masculine rationality. (“Sophocles’s Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone,” in Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Bernard Knox [Twentieth-Century Views Series: Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1966])
Ruth E. Zehfuss has noticed that Antigone cries out for comparison with Susan Glaspell’s Trifles: both are plays in which the protagonists find their moral convictions at odds with the law of the state. Interestingly, Zehfuss sees other parallels. “The settings of both Trifles and Antigone emphasize the relative positions of authority figures and those whose lives they control. Antigone is played out in front of the palace, the locus of authority.” Similarly, in the stage directions for the beginning of Trifles, the Sheriff and the County Attorney are in charge: as guardians of the law, they occupy center stage, near the warm stove, while the women stand off near the cold door. Like Creon, they represent officialdom. Other characters in both plays also reveal similarities. Sophocles’s Ismene, like Glaspell’s Mrs. Peters, is a weak character reluctant to challenge the authority of the law. But both Antigone and Mrs. Hale have the strength to question it and finally to defy it (“The Law and the Ladies in Trifles,” Teaching English in the Two-Year College [Feb. 1992], 42–44).

Language Arts & World Languages

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Die Reise beginnt am 10. __________________.

Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).

Language Arts & World Languages

Mandatos formales e informales. Acabas de ver una película muy buena y se la recomiendas a tu profesora y a una amiga. Usa mandatos formales con tu profesora y mandatos informales con tu amiga.       Modelo       Leer los créditos al final de la película para ver quién es el compositor de la música.                (profesora)      Lea los créditos.                (amiga)            Lee los créditos.                (a las dos)      Lean los créditos.Contarme qué te pareció.  (profesora)

What will be an ideal response?

Language Arts & World Languages

¿Cuál es la actividad favorita de Javier? ¿Qué no le gusta hacer a Javier?

What will be an ideal response?

Language Arts & World Languages

Se trova un lavoro, è contenta.

Rewrite the following sentences using the condizionale in the principal statement and the imperfetto del congiuntivo in the if clause.

Language Arts & World Languages