life and death by way of three main character: Antigone, Creon, and Haemon.
Heaney’s translation of the original Greek tragedy by Sophocles modernizes some of the dialogue but keeps the basic arc of the story the same. As a legend that would have been known to all Greeks, Sophocles’ version of the tale was one of many. It is primarily the arc of the story we are most interested in for this paper. As a group we have been reading about how matters of life and death are shaped or framed by myth, or what one believes about the world. This paper considers how Heaney’s treatment of the play calls our attention to ideas about life and death by way of three main character: Antigone, Creon, and Haemon.
Use the reading to create a theory of how each character imagines how a good life ought to be lived and what an afterlife might look like? Your essay should explore how or where these theories overlap as we might very well expect them to. How and why do their views on these matters diverge and what are we to make of that? Does the voice of the chorus help us to clarify the voices of these three characters? Is this a message the legend tried to convey in general terms, which is why the story persisted in Greek culture such that it was celebrated in plays like the version by Sophocles? What relevance might Seamus Heaney believe this play still holds for us today? *MUST USE BOOK THE BURIAL AT THEBES, BY SOPHOCLES*
