Journal #12: Antigone

Anouilh portrays the conflict of obeying leadership or doing what you see as being the right thing to do.  In Thebes, Creon supports obeying leadership and following the laws as the way to achieve happiness.  He argues that the reasons the laws are made are more political than righteous or spiritual, and that they are implemented in order to keep control over the people and keep Thebes peaceful.  Antigone argues that doing the right thing is the only way to achieve happiness, because leaving something undone will haunt you for the rest of your life.  This conflict can also be categorized as youth versus old because Creon (old) argues against Antigone and Ismene (youth) who both hold the same belief that they should ignore the law and do the actions that they view as being the right thing to do.  Creon, while arguing with Antigone, says "Life is nothing more than the happiness that you get out of it " (Anouilh 41).  As the King, it is Creon's job to supply the people with a peaceful environment in order to keep them happy.  He feels that it was his duty, although undesirable, to manipulate the truth of the two brothers around in order to provide the people of Thebes with a martyr in order to keep them happy.  Antigone, in response to this viewpoint, states "What kind of happiness do you see for me?  [...]  Whom do you want me to leave dying, while I turn away my eyes?" (Anouilh 41).  Antigone believes that happiness only comes from making the right choices, ignoring the laws if necessary in order to obey a higher set of morals.  Anouilh creates this conflict of which no side is portrayed as right or wrong in order to appeal to his audience at the time.  The audience consisted of French and German's during the German occupation of France.  Anouilh's portrayal of the difficulties in correctly using power appealed to the German occupiers, while the portrayal of Antigone and the other young characters as rebels who were acting upon higher morals appealed to the oppressed French people.

Journal #11: Antigone

At the beginning of the play, the chorus was present merely to give non-biased background information on the situation and the characters.  Now that it is later on in the play, the chorus is making more in depth comments on the elements of the play.  The chorus reveals that the tragedy has begun, and there is no chance of stopping it.  "The rest is automatic.  You don't need to lift a finger.  The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled ever since time began, and it runs without friction" (Anouilh 23).  This quote explains that the moment in the plot has happened that starts a process of bad things that can never be reversed.  More importantly, however, the chorus gives an opinion on the lives of humans.  It says that "the machine [...] has been oiled since time began," meaning that it is natural for humans to trap themselves into these tragic situations of which there will never be an escape.  Therefore, due to this reality, there is no point in hiding the fate of the characters.  We all know that they are going to die, so there is no use for making it a surprise.  "In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and every one's destiny is known.  That makes for tranquility" (Anouilh 24).  In knowing the fate of the characters before they die, we feel a calmness when we watch it finally unfold.  The purpose of the chorus telling this to the audience may be to inform the audience of what a tragedy is trying to portray.  The audience who watched Anouilh's version may not have been as educated on tragedies, so Anouilh might have added that part in order to help them understand the point of revealing the character's fate before it literally happened on the stage.  Whether Anouilh added this or not can only be validated if this section was compared with the original text, which I have not done.

Journal #10: Antigone

Events:

Two of Oedipus' sons battle for control of Thebes because Oedipus died.  Eteocles had been in control when Polynices raised a foreign army to fight for the throne.  The two brothers killed each other in battle and Creon, the brother in law of Oedipus, took the throne.  He buried Eteocles with honor but call Polynices a traitor and left his body unburied.  He banned any citizen to mourn or bury the body, doing do would be punishable by death.  Antigone and Ismene are sisters and are also the sisters of the brothers who killed eachother.  Ismene is very beautiful but Haemon asks Antigone to marry him instead of Ismene at a party.  Late at night Antigone sneaks out to bury her brother's body, knowing that she will be killed and she will never get to marry Haemon.

Reflection:

The introduction to this tragedy already has more tragic elements than some of the entire plays which we have read earlier.  This encompasses the belief of the author of the article we wrote in class who suggests that the Greeks were the greatest tragedy writers.  The Greeks understood the elements that made a story tragic, and portrayed them in their plays so well that any audience member would feel a great amount of sympathy for the situations and sufferings of the characters.  Anouilh, in his interpretation of the play Antigone, gives the reader the context of the play by having the chorus relay the past facts to the audience.  I noticed while reading that the chorus is very neutral while giving the information.  This supports the argument that the best tragedies include a conflict between two sides, but neither side is right or wrong, allowing the reader to identify with both.  The neutral telling of the information by the chorus gives no bias either way in whether the decisions made by the characters were right or wrong.  This way, the reader is unaltered in how they view the characters, allowing them to identify with both conflicting sides.

Topic Sentence: Blood Wedding

Leonardo, prior to the wedding, treats his family condescendingly in order to hide his desire to run away with the Bride.

Journal #9: Blood Wedding

Themes:

Acting rashly on selfish desires never ends up well-

This theme is shown primarily by the actions and consequences of the Bride, the Bridegroom, and Leonardo.  Leonardo have the selfish desire to run away with each other, and rashly decide to do it during the worst possible time, during the Bride's wedding with another man.  This action sparks the rash actions of the Bridegroom, who recruits a friend to help him hunt down and kill Leonardo.  Leonardo and the Bridegroom end up dead, and the Bride ends up depressed and shamed.

Get over things that have happened in the past-

This theme is shown primarily in the cases of the Mother.  The Mother constantly complains and obsesses over the killing of her husband and son, the people who killed them, and the instrument that did the killing.  She brings it up in every conversation, bringing down the moods of herself and everyone else, and instilling a feeling of hatred towards the Felixes.  Her constant references to the events in the past influence her decision to have the people help her son kill Leonardo when he runs away with the Bride.  The pursuit of the runaways leads to her son being killed again, ironically the same way that her other family members were killed.

Listen to every one's advice-

Many of the main characters, primarily Leonardo and the Bride, consistently ignored and talk down to people they think are subordinate to themselves.  These people, during those times, were usually offering good advice, which if taken seriously, might have led to a more positive ending.  Leonardo disregarded everything his Wife and Mother-in-law said about his whereabouts on the horse, and controllingly told them to be quiet and leave him alone.  Therefore they had no way to convince him to stay away from the Bride.  The Bride herself received a lot of great advice from her maid about marriage while the maid prepared her for the wedding, but the Bride treated the maid so poorly that the messages never got through.  This led to the Bride and Leonardo to make the unintelligent decision to run away during the Bride's wedding, which ended up killing Leonardo.

Journal #8: Blood Wedding

The setting reflects the characters' innocence in regards to the tragedy that will happen at the wedding.  At the start of the play, the setting is described as being full of flowers, and being colored pink or yellow.  These light happy colors reflect the character's unawareness about Leonardo and the Bride's plans to run away during the wedding.  The flowers are a motif for the eternal existence of a marriage, as is shown when the Bridegroom offers his Bride an orange blossom which he says is "all made of wax.  It lasts forever.  I would have liked you to wear them all over your dress" (64).  This shows that flowers signify that the marriage is a permanent matter, something that the Bride and Leonardo plan to prove wrong, yet all of the other characters are unaware of their plans.  These plans to runaway are portrayed in the setting when it is described as dark.  This darkness signifies how the plans to run away are hidden from everyone else.  The Bride is said to live in a cave, and that is where Leonardo rides in the middle of the night to discuss their escape plans.  A cave is usually thought of as a dark place, and the fact that they hold these discussions in the middle of the night adds to the presence of a concealing darkness in the setting, a darkness that hides their intentions from the other characters.  After they carry out their plan, they ride to a forest, which is also described as dark and dim, and it is only the light of the moon that reveals their plan and their position.  At the start of the play the setting was very light hearted and innocent to the plans of Leonardo and the bride, which were hidden by the darkness of their setting.

Journal #7: Blood Wedding

In order to break the fourth wall, Lorca includes long sections where the characters sing.  Unless I am mistaken about the Spanish culture during the time period (which I very well might be), I would guess that the singing in the play was not a normal occurrence in the society of that time.  The first instance of this is when the Wife and Mother-in-law of Leonardo are trying to sing the baby asleep.  They alternated back and forth between who was singing, and they sung about unconventional things, such as a thirsty horse and a knife.  These things related to the play, but most likely did not relate to the normal life of the people who would be watching the play.  Their style of singing and the topic of their singing was very complicated and would have had to have been well rehearsed to be sung correctly, even though the singing seemed very spur of the moment, as though they randomly broke out into song.  These actions would be nearly impossible to replicate in a normal house setting of the time period, therefore giving the audience the realization that it is just a play.  The singing is a noticeable break from the regular talking and living that the actors act out, therefore giving the audience the realization that because it is out of the ordinary, it must be important.  In the circumstance I described above, Lorca uses the singing to break the fourth wall in order to draw the audience's attention to key factors in the play, which are expressed in the words of the song.