Antigone Vs. Jocasta Essay example - 830 Words

Women of any society always have had a different role to play than that of men. Psychologically, a woman is to find a mate in order to bring healthy offspring into the world. Conservative thinking tells women to cook, clean, take care of the family, and to perform other miscellaneous domestic chores. Yet, Sophocles also defines the place of a woman in his tragedies: Oedipus the King and Antigone. Women were respected as very powerful and dignified individuals, but at the same time were forbidden to meddle with the affairs of men as they, figuratively, were to stand behind men at all times. The mother and daughter combination of Jocasta, the typical Greek aristocrat, and Antigone, a strong-willed woman who defies her sex role, opposing†¦show more content†¦/ ...take this hand of mine to bury the dead? (Roche 192-193). Antigones political beliefs differ radically from both Jocastas and the states in terms of the attitude a woman should have. Antigone draws interest to the distinction between human law and divine law, as she shows serious doubt towards Creons authority. When asked by Creon if she has chosen to flagrantly disobey his law, she replies, Naturally! Since Zeus never promulgated such a law / Nor will you find that Justice / Mistress of the world below, / publishes such laws to mankind (Roche 210). After pointing out that his edicts will never be able to supersede the will of the gods, she throws Creons edict against Polyneices burial in a discreditable and ludicrous perspective. The thinking patterns of the mother and daughter also contrast each other as each woman has different ideologies and doctrines in which she believes. Antigone is a woman of fate and preordained destiny, while Jocasta is most definitely not. Jocasta has no faith in a mans ability to tell and map out the future as she believes there is no art of seership known to man (Roche 40). Jocasta bases her rationale on the simple dogma that if the god insists on tracking down the truth, / why then, let the god himself get on the track (Roche 40). Her implicitly factual andShow MoreRelatedContrast Between Oedipus the King and Antigone by Sophocles744 Words   |  3 PagesContrast between Oedipus the King and Antigone Sophocles, a famous and renowned Greek dramatist, is the playwright to both the play Oedipus the King and Antigone. Along with Antigone and Oedipus Sophocles had also wrote Electra and Fete. Sophocles wrote many Greek tragedies which are plays in which the main character in the play suffers a tragedy due to some flaw of theirs. An example would be how Oedipus (thinking he is defying a prophecy) murders his father and weds his mother. His flaw was himRead MoreAnalysis Of Oedipus The King And Antigone1170 Words   |  5 Pagesworld. 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The sins of the fathers in the Theban plays written by Sophocles, illustrates the conflicts between man’s actions against the power of unwritten law, the willingness to ignore the truth, the misused limits of free will, and the false notion of beating the ways of fate. The fathers, chronologically Lauis, Oedipus, and Creon all exemplify people who acted in ways to avoid the predestined fates set up on them