Judgement Play
Human beings by nature judge both themselves and others. Judgment comes through a person's ego telling them that they can have control over a particular situation. This desire for control promulgates a false sense of responsibility in essentially uncontrollable situations. For example, a human feels a responsibility to the dead. Humans build mental and physical shrines for the dead. They mourn the dead with funerals. Most people practice specified burial rituals to ensure a happier afterlife for the deceased. These practices are attempts to exert control over a person's death and a person's fate in the afterlife, eventhough both natural and supernatural forces are guided by specific rules that are absolute and unavoidable. The control, judgment, and sense of responsibility over a dead person's body is absurd and pretentious. Such is the case in Sophoclese's play "Antigone." The play begins with Antigone declaring her ego driven righteousness. She declares that she will abandon the (man made)law that states if a man shall "assault the gods of the city, (he will) be denied burial."(Barnet, Berman, Burto, Draya p.81)
Both Antigone and Creon suffered deaths because they acted on their own ego driven terms. Their assertion of control of supernatural law is a defiance of the gods. The only person who acts in complete accordance with the gods is Tiresias. Tiresias relays an oracle declared directly by the gods. His reward is life because he acts on purely righteous terms. Not one person, however, can say what is actually just. The only two absolutes we have as humans are life and death. The rest is left up to speculation. Unfortunately the nature of human beings interferes with natural/supernatural laws through cultural or religious practices. The criteria of these practices is first invented, then transmitted, and finally perpetuated into man made laws and schools of thought. Therefore it is impossible to say what is absolutely just, and the question of what is absolutely just remains infinitely rhetorical. She declares that she will die for her brother's honor, further asserting her own righteousness and denying herself any possible fault. Such an act is inherently defiant of the gods. She is essentially putting words into the mouths of the gods to pro
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 773
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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