Antigone Moral Evaluation

Families belong together “Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten” -Lilo and stitch “To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.” -Montesquieu There a is a lot of problems in this world today. The topic I chose to focus on was families belonging together. I will be comparing this to a book called The burial of Thebes. The main character I am going to be focusing on is Antigone. During the book, Antigone wanted to bury her brother Polynices, but Creon didn't want her to bury her brother because he betrayed the city. Antigone felt that she had to bury her brother because she had to pay respect to him. Creon made a law that made sure Antigone couldn't bury Polynices but Antigone didn’t follow the law and buried her brother. Creon told her that the consequence for burying her brother would be that she would get locked up into a cave.

The two quotes that I chose to represent my topics are “Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten” -Lilo and stitch and “To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.”-Montesquieu. The first quote I chose was from a movie that represents that family should be together through the good and the bad. This really connects with the current event I am focussing on which is families getting separated. I feel like this quote can really connect with the families because right now is when families should be most connected and working together to find their kids again. Trough out all the families that come together and protest they give each other strength to find their children or family members. The second quote can compare Donald trump and Creon.they both have to work with people in order for everyone to be happy. But that is not the case with both of them. They are both very hubris they are higher than everyone. During the book, there is a lot of othering happening. Antigone was not able to bury her brother Polynices. I thought that her punishment was very hard and Creon still punished her after everyone was telling him that it was the wrong thing to do. Creon son Haemon decided to be on Antigone's side because that was his future wife.

When Heamon took Antigone's side Creon got mad and told him that he would get punished too. Some of the things that Creon said that would be considered othering against Antigone were “From now on they’ll act like women...no more running loose” and “worthless women”. Antigone was bothered because she was a young woman. At that time it was a woman's job to cook and clean and they were ranked very lower than men. Which means that if they did anything wrong they would have a punishment. Some othering that is happening in the current event of families getting separated was that because they were immigrants they were separated from there families. They are othering young children which some of them are girls. They have currently stopped separating families but they didn’t reunite the families that were separated. There are currently still 2,000 immigrant children who remain separated from there families. This current event causes a lot of rallies and protests. A lot of people protested against president Trump. The protesters went to the white house to protest but president trump was nowhere to be found. Some people decided to take it to court because it was very unfair that children did not get to see their families. The people tried to be heard they knew that the best thing they could do is use there voice and speak up for there kids and family members.

The othering happening in families getting separated and the play focusing on the othering of Antigone are similar because they both are fighting against the laws to accomplish something. In both the book and the current event they would like to achieve something. Antigone wants to bury her brother and in order to do that, she has to be rebellious and break the law. And in the current event, they want the president to stop separating families and something they do to accomplish that is a protest and have rallied with people who are holding signs. I think the actions that both events have are similar because they both want to protest to accomplish something that they are not supposed to do. During some of the rallies, there were people breaking the laws and being rebellious and this is very similar to how Antigone acted. One way they are different is that in the protests and rallies against families getting separated there was a lot of people against Donald Trump and in the book it was Antigone against. The outcome of these events are very different because in the play Antigone kills herself, “I will bury him myself. And if death comes, so be it. There’ll be a glory in it. I’ll go down to the underworld hand and hand with a brother.

And I’ll go with my head held high. The gods will be proud of me” (Sophocles 10). She was proud of what she was going to do (which was bury her brother Polynieces) and she was not afraid of Creon. With families getting separated that rallies and protest helped in a way that they would stop separating families. But one of the bad things is that there are still 2,000 children without there families. During this paper, you learned that not only in books you find things that are hurting someone. There are a lot of things in this world today that are not right and are currently hurting others. One of the main things that are happening in this world are people getting other because they look different than others. An example would be all of these innocent kids getting othered by being separated from there families because they do not have the same opportunities as us. Works Cited “Families Belong Together.” Families Belong Together, www.familiesbelongtogether.org/. “What Happens When We Separate Families.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/201807/what-happens-when-we-separate-families. Sophocles, and Seamus Heaney. The Burial at Thebes: Sophocles' Antigone. Faber, 2005. 

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