Tragic heroes are generally people of high social stature with a tragic flaw that usually manifests itself in the form of poor judgment and arrogance, condemning the hero to a disastrous end and establishing the character’s destiny. Antigone is a tragic heroine deeply conflicted between her virtue and her hubris, personifying courage in her civil disobedience against criminal “leadership.” A product of incest, her very existence is shameful, but perhaps this is why Antigone has such a burning desire for righteousness. She has great regard for following tradition, and a compulsion to follow these traditions even at the cost of her own life. Sacrifice is one of her qualities and she is ready to die for what she believes in. She shows disdain for Ismene’s cowardice and tendency to be a fair-weather friend. Her reprisals against traitors are especially fiery. Her concern for family becomes almost an unhealthy obsession, and her selflessness is soon shown to be madness and self-infliction. Being a tragic heroine, she shows excellence of character and bravery, but her fatal flaw is that her will to please the gods is greater than her will to preserve her own life. In the end, uncompromised rigidity is her downfall.
She obeys the laws of the gods and is careless about the mortal law’s penalty, her own death.Antigone does not understand the need to act according to humanity’s place in the scheme in things, one’s pleasing of the gods should continue up until the point when it puts ones life in danger. Our heroine shows hubris by breaking the rule of the golden mean, not because she is egotistical, but because her head gets in the clouds when she believes herself to be a high and mighty enforcer of virtue. This is a form of arrogance, which Zeus despises. Her conception of justice is so rigid that she puts herself in harm’s way, which is not at all honorable in the eyes of the Greeks. Her ‘holier than thou’ quest has gone too far, and she is stubborn and irrational, lacking the common sense the Greeks so valued. One example of Antigone’s extremely twisted vision of unbending idealism is when she told Ismene she wouldn’t care if she yelled incriminations about the burial from the rooftops, an unnecessary passion and clear disregard of moderation. The exact opposite of her sister, Ismene is, according to Greek conventional wisdom of the time, functioning ideally in her moderation, aware that it is vital not to overstep her boundaries in the overall scheme of things. Ismene represents that valued middle ground, honoring the golden mean that keeps one in prosperity. An instance in which this comes into play is when Ismene has sense enough to let her sister know that, as a girl, “she was not born to contend with men” and her rational nature rejects her sister’s compulsion to be “in love with impossibility”. Ismene is good-natured despite sharing her sister’s inherited sadness, the curse of dishonor. In the warped mind of Antigone, Ismene is a pure coward for using conventional wisdom, opting for self preservation and rejecting rash and unsound acts, but the ancient Greek audience of Sophocles saw her as the most sensible because her sense of rationality rules her.
The Essay on Greek Heroine Cults
Larson, Jennifer Greek Heroine Cults. University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Jennifer Larsons extensive knowledge on the subject of ancient women, goddesses, gods, and mythology is very apparent in this book. I found the book difficult to read as one would read a novel or even a textbook. However, I thought that Larsons very detailed (and referenced and cross-referenced) descriptions of heroine ...
