Mythos Master
The virtue at the heart of this play, which governs the honor we give to those who are responsible for our creation
What is piety?
The Greek word for "character," associated on the rhetorical triangle with an appeal to authority
What is ethos?
Antigone's father
Who is Oedipus?
"It's best to keep the established laws to the very day we die." (117)
Who is Creon?
The Athenians believed that failing to bury someone justly would result in this being called down upon the polis
What is a curse?
Creon sentences Antigone to this form of execution
What is to be entombed alive?
The Greek word for the protagonist's fatal mistake in the first half of a tragedy
What is hamartia?
The tritagonist of the play's first half
Who is Ismene?
"Never, I tell you, if I had been the mother of children, or if my husband died, exposed and rotting-- I'd never have taken this ordeal upon myself, never defied our people's will. What law, you ask, do I satisfy with what I say? A husband dead, there might have been another. A child by another too, if I had lost the first. But mother and father both lost in the halls of Death, no brother could ever spring to light again." (105)
Who is Antigone?
The gods most closely associated with Creon and Antigone
Who are Zeus and Hades/Pluto?
Antigone's cause of death
What is suicide?
The Greek word for the climax of a tragedy, the reversal of fortune
What is peripeteia?
Creon's son and Antigone's betrothed, who commits suicide at the end of the play
Who is Haemon?
"It is you -- your high resolve that sets this plague on Thebes. The public altars and sacred hearths are fouled, one and all, by the birds and dogs with carrion torn from the corpse, the doomstruck son of Oedipus! And so the gods are deaf to our prayers..." (111)
Who is Tiresias?
One of the ways we can analyze characters: via their dialogue, or this Greek word
What is lexis?
The Greek word for "unbinding," which refers to the falling action of a tragedy
What is lysis?
The Greek word for the release of emotions that a successful tragedy is supposed to bring about
What is catharsis?
This figure, a representative of Apollo, warns Creon of his impiety against the gods in the second half of the play
Who is Tiresias?
"He has won his bride at last, poor boy, not here but in the houses of the dead. Creon shows the world that of all the ills afflicting men the worst is lack of judgment." (123)
Who is the Messenger?
One of the ways we can analyze characters: via their critical thinking, or this Greek word
What is dianoia?
The queen of Thebes, who commits suicide at the end of the play
Who is Eurydice?
The Greek word for "binding," which refers to the rising action of a tragedy
What is desis?
This character's treachery and death sets off the plot of Antigone
Who is Polynices?
"No more prayers now. For mortal men, there is no escape from the doom we must endure." (127)
Who is the Leader?
TEAM PLAY: Taking seven minutes, and using textual evidence and the structure of Greek tragedy, make an argument for whether Creon or Antigone is the play's tragic hero
Professor's discretion