Oedipus at Colonus

In his short story, “The Lie”, Kurt Vonnegut argues that when people have a sense of entitlement they abuse their power to get their way. When Dr. and Mrs. Remenzel find that Eli had not been accepted into Whitehill they have two very different agendas. Mrs. Remenzel wants to find Eli and comfort him, where as Doctor Remenzel wants to get Eli admitted; “‘There’s a majority of the Board of Overseers in this room at this very moment. Everyone of them is a close friend of mine, or a close friend of…

The play Antigonê by Sophocles is one of literatures’ great rebel stories about a woman that goes against an unfair king and a society that considers her gender inferior. It is a story of a tragic character of noble birth (Theban King Creon) that suffers an anguished descent from life and power basically on account of his pride. Antigonê, who is King Creon’s niece and future daughter-in-law, defies King Creon’s directive to not bury her brother Polyneices. King Creon declared that Polyneices be…

Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.” Namely, a person does not rise in status or become powerful by attempting to gain control over others by force; rather, one achieves a greater level of status or power through individual merit. A powerful person is a person who, not only possess political or social authority but who is also strong or influential in the behavior of others or in the course of events. The pursuit of power is depicted in many literary…

“Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divine lightning.” In Sophocles’ Antigone, the protagonist, Antigone, is both the instrument and the victim of the divine lightning. The suffering imposed upon Antigone by Creon allows her to discover the importance of democracy. She becomes both the spark that ignites the electricity of social change and the martyr who dies for the flame she kindled. Through dialogue that displays expressions of civil disobedience, idealism, and…

Like all men in the entire world, some make mistakes and realize that they are human just like everyone else and that they need to move on and keep on the momentum of what every it is that they are doing. These men are the ones that will succeed and will continue, and never give up. Unlike other men in the world, we have the ones that don’t take being wrong kindly. These men will take drastic measures to make sure that they will not be discouraged by others just because they were wrong. Men from…

Antigone is the tragic hero in this drama story for these reasons. She had way to much pride for herself and what she believes in, she has all her faith in what is right, and she thinks that she is doing the best option. She makes some bad decisions but she is the tragic hero in this story because she is the worst off out of her family. In the first part of the story her brother is killed in battle for picking the wrong side to fight with. So the brother that fought on the right side got…

Conscience saves Souls Man makes mistakes, man-made law might be a product of mistakes. Disobey the law when your conscience tells you the law is unjust and against humanity. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law” (King). Authorities always create the unjust law and cover them with beautiful lies to fake them as just laws, then trick the people to obey them. The obedience of unjust laws participated significantly in the…

King cobras are known to eat other snakes including other cobras; however, during mating season the King cobra produces a special hormone that makes him lose his appetite so that he can’t eat his mate. In the story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” by Rudyard Kipling, there is a cobra named Nagaina. One day a mongoose is washed out due to a storm, and meets Nagaina and her husband Nag in the garden of a bungalow. Right away Nagaina knows that the mongoose Rikki can’t stay because venomous snakes and…

The interaction between Antigone and Ismene in the opening scene of the tragedy plays an integral role as the introduction to the conflict. Their dialogue revolves around Creon’s decree that Polyneices is to go unburied for his traitorous act against the state. This matter reflects their role as women, daughters, and sisters in Greek society. Each sister personifies a different perspective on Creon’s edict, both having serious ramifications on the tragedy as a whole. Their conflicting beliefs…

What makes a leader effective? Making broad decisions can be a daunting task, but good leaders know to keep the best interests of their citizens prized above all else. When leaders divert from this vision is when they cause harm both to their reputation and to their people. In Antigone, the king of Thebes, Creon, orders Antigone to death after she disobeys his law. He decreed that the body of Antigone’s brother Polynices would not be buried, in opposition to the gods’ mandate regarding burial.…