Post date: Sep 8, 2016 6:52:51 PM
I have to say first that I could not get over all of the awesome one liners in this book. If people think that kids have sass now, look at Haemon when he talks to his dad, Creon. He says things such as "what a splendid king you'd make of a desert island" (826) and "you really expect to fling abuse at me and not receive the same?" (848-9). While I do realize that the intention is to be more hurtful than funny, I still found it rather comical. This is just one of the perks of reading a work when you are not the intended audience; you find jokes that are not there.
The main point I took from Antigone is that I want my own chorus to follow me and give me advice in real life. I took the use of them as a sort of all-knowing, unbiased, free for all advice group that appears whenever you need them, sometimes even when you think you do not need them but you really do. I loved when they first speak in the play, they use words like glory, beam, sun, brightest, and eye (117-22). All of these words so close together in six lines drilled into me that they possess the light and the truth and all of us should really listen to them...Creon might disagree.
While helpful, the chorus does also remind me of the people who follow the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You sometimes forget that they are there and then surprise, they break out into song. Anyway, I again enjoyed the chorus’ lines later in the play when they are talking to Antigone. They have been having a conversation for a few pages, Creon enters, and then the chorus vaguely addressed someone, possibly both of them. They say:
“Reverence asks some reverence in return-
but attacks on power never go unchecked,
not by the man who holds the reins of power.
Your own blind will, your passion has destroyed you” (959-62).
I usually do not like to include quotes as long as these in my posts but I felt this was necessary. Their words could fit for either Antigone or Creon: both are rash, both are messing with the order of power, both are blind. It seems that they have been so consumed in trying to make their authority "right", that they have lost what they were truly fighting for. Antigone can no longer redeem her family's honor if she is dead and Creon cannot be an effective ruler if he never listens to his people. I really enjoyed the placement of the scene and the specific vagueness of the words, if that makes any sense.
In regards to my title, bad things happen if you do not listen to the chorus.