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Reaction to the casting of Antigone

 During the lesson in which we developed the opening scene of Antigone, there is a moment where the narrator hands out the parts for the play and our teacher asked us to log the feelings we had towards being cast as Antigone: what Antigone meant to us  and how it felt to know that we were going to take her journey and step into her shoes. And also how we would feel on a night in which another actor would be cast as Antigone.

I see Antigone as a very strong character, whether I agree with her morals and her actions I'm not sure, but I certainly admire her will. She has this aim to do what she thinks is right and is so persistent in pursuing this aim regardless of what anybody tells her, regardless of the numerous she is told she will be killed. This part of her personality is the part that resonates with me the most, she is so sure of herself.  One can imagine that before the death of her brothers she had felt quite suppressed and without an aim in life (especially given the fact she is a young woman of a very important family in a patriarchal era) and without a feeling of importance yet now that she has decided to bury her brother, she has found a task  that she must complete to honour him. She finally feels certain of something and  it gives her a purpose in life, making this action her purpose in life gives her the power to be willing to lose her life trying to complete this action. Also given the fact she is the younger sister of Ismene, who is this beautiful successful woman, Antigone has always felt like she lives in the shadow of Ismene,  but now that she has this aim she can feel as though she is worth more than Ismene because she is honouring her family in a way that Ismene cannot due to her own morals and her respect for the law.  This feeling is actually something I can relate to even more because I am the youngest of four children, and I definitely feel a strong sense of competition between them, I feel compelled to succeed and make my own name for myself.

However, with Antigone's self assured nature comes quite a childish, selfish quality. She hasn't thought about her actions very seriously at all yet she has committed to them instantly, regardless to the fact she didn't know her brother very well and he was an awful, murderous person.  Especially in her conversation with Creone, we see how defiant she is and her lack of care that nobody else sees that by burying her brother, she is proving that she is a strong, compassionate, loving family member (even though this action is so destructive that it shows the opposite but she doesn't see this she is blind to this).  This quality of Antigone is so frustrating but it is understandable considering what her life must've been like up until this point and I think it's actually a very interesting personality trait to have.

So, to condense my thoughts into a sentence, I think in the moment I am given the part of Antigone I would feel pride, excitement and a sense of duty to honour her journey regardless of the difficulty of some of her characteristics.


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