Death Unconquerable
In Antigone by Sophocles, Ode III discusses how love conquers all; love is unconquerable. However the entire play refutes this idea. Three main characters kill themselves due to the circumstances in Sophocles' play, maybe because they loved one another, but love does not succeed in these situations, death overcomes all of them. Perhaps Ode III should be about death unconquerable. Ode III speaks directly to love. "Surely you swerve upon ruin/ The just man's heart, / As here you have made bright anger/ Strike between father and son - " (218). Despite Creon's knowledge of his son, Haimon's love for Antigone, he sentences her to death. Haimon even came to his father in hopes to change his mind. He uses arguments he knows might change his father's mind and discards all the arguments he knows his father will not accept. However, Creon refutes even all the acceptable arguments. Despite the fact that, Creon loves his son, he does not give Haimon the opportunity to show his father that there could be better ways to do what he has threa
tened to do. At the end of Ode III, the Chorus refers to Aphrodite as merciless, after Haimon and Creon's argument, Creon seems to be the one who is merciless. Creon presents love in a mocking view. When arguing with his son, Creon tells his son that love is not worth it. Eventually she will not love you anymore and you will have a "hellcat in bed and elsewhere" (214). However at the end of the play, Creon can not stand to live without his son and his wife and he says, "Let it come. Let death come quickly, and be kind to me" (237). Creon himself can not live without the ones he loves the most. Death overcomes him. In the end, as if to spite his father, Haimon kills himself. Due to his father's decisions his fiancee is dead, and since he believes that he can not live without her, he commits suicide and leaves his father to live with the fact that his son may still be alive had he not made the decision he had. Love did not overcome this situation, death did. Love did not solve the problem. The problem was diminished because the
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 697
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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