Allusions In Antigone

Sophocles, a much famed tragedian, is considered by many literary critics to be able to write beautiful plays that are effective in teaching the audience valuable life lessons by retelling Ancient Greek mythology into tragedies, whilst using several allusions to other renowned Ancient Greek myths. However, these life lessons were intended for the Ancient Greek audience, but these life lessons have managed to bridge the gap of time and appeal to the modern audience. A clear example of one of Sophocles’ works transverse time can be seen in one of his most famous plays Antigone. Antigone was written more than 2,000 years ago and is now deemed by literary critics to be a recognised piece of literature in the modern era. Antigone teaches several …show more content…
The reason Sophocles would want the audience to focus on the plot is due to the fact that he has written Antigone in such a way that all the themes cannot be extracted when examining each individual character for they are stock characters. This is evident in the character development of major characters such as Antigone. One would not find many themes in the character development of Antigone because she is meant to be a stock character; she is supposed to be the character that is innocent and ends up being punished due to his/her resolve; Antigone’s being that she must honour the gods and bury her brother for it is the right thing to do in the gods’ eyes. However the usage of stock characters for the modern audience would be aiding them in understanding the play because the modern audience would not be able to comprehend certain archaic characteristics of some characters such as sexism without having background information on the play, and Sophocles’ comparisons between his usage of stock characters and other myths including the same stock characters would keep today’s audience entertained. For instance, Sophocles makes a comparison between Antigone and Danaë, who are both the same type of stock characters; the innocent that gets punished. Antigone “...traded/ the light of day for the bolted brazen vaults” (1038-1039) just like Danaë. This provokes the audience to start hoping against all odds for a positive outcome for the trapped Antigone, because in the myth of Antigone, Antigone dies, but in the myth of Danaë, Danaë is, to an extent, saved by Zeus. This keeps

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