This is a presentation for Week 4 for English 203 Life U.

1. Week 4 Power Point
ANTIGONE AND MEDEA

2. Sophocles
Sophocles wrote a series of stories about Thebes known as the
“Thebian Cycle.” It started with Oedipus, but then Sophocles
continued the story with Oedipus’ children:
 Oedipus’ sons, Eteocles & Polynices fought over control of
Thebes.
 Oedipus’ daughter, Antigone, became a tragic heroine.

3. Antigone -- backstory
After Oedipus was exiled, his brother-in-
law Kreon claimed the throne. Kreon had
been raising Oedipus’s children, including
his sons Eteokles and Polyneikes.
Before he left Thebes, Oedipus cursed his
sons and doomed them to kill each other.
Henry Fuseli
Oedipus Cursing His Son Polynices, 1786

4. Antigone –
The Clash
At first, the brothers agree to rule
Thebes jointly by alternating years
in power, but after his first year,
Eteocles refused to step down.
To gain the rule of Thebes,
Polynices needed warriors, but
Theban men within the city would
only fight for his brother. so,
Polynices gathered a group of men
from Argos.
The brothers fight over the throne
and kill each other with swords.

5. Antigone—The Clash
Because Eteokles died in defense of the
city, he was been buried with full honors
due a military hero.
Because Polyneikes died a traitor, Kreon
has ordered that his corpse remain
unburied. This is a significant sign of
dishonor and disgrace, as we saw before in
the Iliad.

6. Antigone -- Themes
The most significant is a clash of
values – the gods’ laws vs. man’s
laws.
Antigone sees her duty as
Polyneikes’ sister as having priority
over Kreon’s decrees. (See p. 709,
lines 93 – 94.)
Kreon values the political over the personal and is
devoted to his concept of order. Character-
defining lines: p. 712, lines 214 – 215.
Gender roles are another crucial theme.
Antigone’s actions are a threat to the
traditional power structure that puts men in
charge. For Kreon, her defiance represents
chaos in more ways than one. Antigone calls
him a “mere man” (718), in comparison with
the gods, but he feels he must be the ultimate
authority (p. 719, line 523; p. 720, line 570).
Even when he talks with Haimon, on p. 724 –
725, we see his dread of losing power as
gender-linked.
Kreon’s misogyny may shock us
today, but at the time the play was
first performed, the audience would
have sympathized with his views.

7. Medea –
different in a
number of ways
 First, the audience would not have known the full
backstory from the outset, nor would they have
known everything that was to happen. Previous
tellings of Medea’s story showed that either her
and Jason’s children were killed by King Creon’s
family (different Creon) or she killed them by
accident while trying to protect them. Her
murdering them would have been a shocking plot
twist.
 Medea herself is an unusual protagonist for a
Greek tragedy. She does not “fall from a great
height.” She has already been brought low when
the play’s action begins. She’s also an outsider, a
foreigner.

8. Medea -- Themes
Gender issues are all over this play. The story of the woman “left behind for a younger model”
and the man who can’t quite manage to understand why that would hurt her is very familiar to
us now.
Medea is both powerful (as a mage, a “wise woman”) and powerless (as a woman and a
foreigner). Her intelligence and arcane skills make her dangerous (see p. 752, lines 288-289).
But her being “without a home” is also repeatedly emphasized (e.g. p. 746, line 41; p. 752
lines 258 – 261; p. 755, lines 413 – 415; p. 759, lines 549 – 550).
Order vs. Chaos is also a major theme. Before we even meet Medea, we hear the nurse
tell of her descent into chaos (p. 745 – 747). She has become a creature of pure
emotion (rage).
Unlike Antigone, Medea “gets away with it.”
If the play is to have any impact at all, we must believe that Medea loved her children
and therefore suffers greatly at what she “has” to do. Yet is the Medea we see at the
end of the play very different from the one we saw at the beginning?