Revenge In Antigone

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The very first law ever written was found in Mesopotamia from 1754 BC, and today we learn about it in history as Hammurabi’s Code. One of the most famous laws from this tablet is, “an eye for an eye.” Even before humans were capable of making paper, even before humans knew that there were other planets, and even before humans understood what the sun was, humans understood the concept of revenge. Revenge is the topic of many literary works, not excluding the Greek tragedies. Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Hippolytus by Euripides, and Antigone by Sophacles, are all Greek tragedies written with a central theme of revenge and how revenge quickly turns into a cycle of harm. In Aeschylus’s tragedy, Agamemnon, the theme of revenge is prevalent throughout…show more content…
This opening scene is important to keep in mind as the reader approaches the final scene, in which Artemis promises to seek revenge on Aphrodite for beginning the conflict in the first place. By opening and closing this tragedy with scenes about revenge, Euripides demonstrates an understanding for the vicious cycle of revenge. Antigone, a tragedy by Sophacles, deals with the issue of human law and divine law, and within that there is the protagonist, Antigone, who sees herself as a revenge seeker for a disruption of the divine law. In the very first scene, there is a dialogue between Antigone and her sister, Ismene, over the matter of giving their brother, Polyneices, his burial rights, even though he was branded a traitor and forbidden from a proper funeral. In lines 82 through 89, Antigone…show more content…
This is a type of revenge, and thus a cycle follows, but in this tragedy, the reader is given a glimpse of what the cycle looks like when it is finally broken. Creon responds to Antigone’s actions by essentially sentencing her to a slow death in a concrete cell, in which she hangs herself. Creon’s son, Haemon, who was Antigone’s fiancé, kills himself in response to Antigone’s suicide, and then subsequently Creon’s wife, Eurydice, also commits suicide upon the news of her son’s death. The cycle of revenge ends because Creon realizes there is no one for him to blame except for himself, and he is forced to accept the horrible reality he took a part in creating for
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