Catharsis In Antigone: The First Rule Of Greek Tragedy

Register to read the introduction… Catharsis is having pity or terror. A character must scare the audience or make the audience feel bad for them. After the play audience must want to lead a better life. In Antigone, there is a girl names Antigone. She has two brothers who were soldiers. They both died, one had a proper burial and one was going to be left as food for the vultures, to be rotted away. Antigone did not want this to happen. She uses catharsis in this quote: “But the unhappy corpse of Polyneices / he has proclaimed to all the citizens, / they say, no man may hide / in a grave nor mourn in funeral, / but leave unwept, unburied, a dainty treasure / for the birds that see him, for their feast’s delignt” (30-35). In this quote, Antigone wants the audience to feel pity for her. She is showing that she wants to bury her brother and that he should not be left for the birds to feast on. She wants her sister, Ismene, to also feel bad for not wanting to bury their brother. Another example of catharsis in Antigone is as follows: CHORUS. But who is the murderer? Who is the murdered? Tell us. MESSENGER. Haemon is dead; the hand that shed his blood was his very own.
CHORUS. Truly his own hand? Or his …show more content…
The character must have some sort of epiphany or their actions come back to either help or hurt them. They may even go from ignorance to knowledge. In Creon’s case, he went from ignorance to knowledge. “Yes I have learned it in my bitterness. At this moment / God has sprung on my head with a vast weight / and struck me down. He shook me in my savage ways; / he has overturned joy, has trampled it, / underfoot. This mains men suffer / are pains indeed” (1337-1342). In the story, Creon locks up Antigone in a chamber for her wrongdoings. He realizes that what he did was wrong. He has a change of mind, from good to bad. “For my part, since my intention is so changed, / as I bound her myself, myself will free her. I am afraid it may be best, in the end / of life, to have kept the old accepted laws” (1179-1182). In this quote he says his intention has changed, he no longer wants to have Antigone locked up, nor does he want to kill her. He decides to change his ways and his laws. Creon is that character that goes through the most change in …show more content…
One of the points is it must take place in twenty-four hours. The next one is it must be in one location. The last is it must all be closely related. Meaning, all parts of the story bust be cohesive. Aristotle realized that it may be difficult to make a play happen in twenty-four hours and in one day. Aristotle then took back the law of one day one location. It is no longer necessary for Greek tragedy to occur in a twenty-four hour time period and in one single location. Antigone is all closely related, although it may not occur in the same place and in only one