Negativity About: Greek Plays

I can't stress enough how much I hate it when I have to read morbid Greek plays for school. This time, it was Antigone. You know, the one about the girl who wanted to please the gods, so she buried her brother, but King Creon had made a law where no one could bury him, but, of course, the animals could devour him. How humane. (Note the sarcasm.)

So the girl gets taken before the king for him to thunder in rage at. Turns out she's engaged to his son so it should put him in a hard place, right? Nope. He has no trouble sending her to starve to death in a cave.

Everything's rainbows and sparkles so far, right? No one is too upset about how kind this world is? Okay, let's go on.

So his son finds out that Antigone hanged herself, and, in his desperation and blind fury, tries to kill his father. He ends up killing himself.

When King Creon's wife, Eurydice, hears about her son Haimon's death, she is devastated. She kills herself and curses Creon with her dying breath.

Before hand, everyone in the play warned Creon not to let his pride and desire for power go crazy. (Not in those exact words, but you get the idea.) Obviously he's hard of hearing.

He ends up crying about how he lost his family because of one selfish act. He says he is sorry and wishes he could go back to before everyone killed themselves.

What's the oh-so-wonderful lesson learned according to my beautiful schoolbook?

No man can be happy or wise without obeying the gods.

Excuse you.

Excuse you.

Antigone died heartbroken and alone and she was the only one in the whole darn play who listened to the gods.

Oh my word. This play is depressing and morbid. It's everything horrible and sad tossed into one.

I didn't cry while reading it, no. But I did gasp pretty loud a couple times.

Having three people kill themselves is not okay. And the Greeks watched these plays for entertainment. It entertained them to see a tyrant commit an act against the gods, thus creating a chain reaction which ended in three people committing suicide.

And they were all nice people.

Haimon especially. He was the nicest one there, even if he did try to kill his dad.

And what Creon does at the very end of the play?

He kills himself.

Sorry about the rant, you guys. (Or girls. Or both.) Just had to vent about the unfairness of it all. Hopefully my next post won't be so anger-orientated.

What's my next post gonna be about? you ask.

Oh, well, that's easy.

I came up with it ages ago. (As in, last night at midnight while I was pondering over what the heck the universe is and what's all in it. And why does gravity exist? Why do we exist?)

I'm going to review Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde.

Later,

Tansie G.