Key Themes In Sophocles Antigone

Sophocles’ Antigone is known as one of the greatest pieces of fiction of all time. Before that accolade is brushed off as a relic of an ancient age, one must truly think of what that means. To be one the greatest anything of all time, something must achieve unheralded greatness with its existence. The drama accomplishes this requirement easily through its key themes and the execution of those themes. Divinity opposing authority, the contrasting classical values of the polis and the oikos, power earned through democracy and tyranny, and even the critical context of gender are used in the script to create a meaningful message about blood and power. As with all great works, Antigone has several iterations across a variety of media, the most relevant being Yorgos Javellas’ 1961 film of the same name. The film provides a similarly complex message about how our families can be challenged, and what the word family means in different contexts. However, the film version handles the key themes in a different manner. While it achieves the same effect, these themes and their execution cannot go unnoticed in critical analysis. The struggle between the polis and the oikos is one of the most blatant in …show more content…
Antigone herself sees variation between the drama and the film, particularly gender and prejudice surrounding it. In both versions of the story, women are seen as helpless. Ismene asks Antigone more than once about what they could possibly do to defy Creon, though Antigone does not see herself as limited in this respect. Creon disagrees, and believes that as the man, he deserves to rule over her. Creon and Haemon even go on to use gendered insults at one another during their arguments. Both stories use the theme similarly to argue their point. At first, it seems gender as a theme does not necessarily perpetuate any message within the story, but that is a superficial