Antigone the Hypocrit

As I’ve skimmed over Antigone, I noticed that Antigone is a rather hypocritical character. I am not able to fully analyze the reasons for this but I’m hoping as I write this blog I can gain further insight into this question. Her reasons while trying to persuade her sister Ismene to go against King Creon’s order and bury their brother are contradicted when she is fighting with Ismene again in front of King Creon. Initially, Antigone emphasizes the obligation as a sister to rightfully bury her brother Polyneices just as her brother Eteocles was.

Antigone gives Ismene the opportunity to either become “a true sister, or a traitor to [her] family,” by choosing between burying Polyneices or allowing his corpse to remain unburied and eaten by animals (1326, line 27). When Ismene refuses to help her bury their brother, Antigone immediately criticizes Ismene and informs her that the dead will hate her for betraying her family in this way. Even when Ismene promises not to tell anyone, in an effort to protect her sister, Antigone turns it back around on Ismene and tells her to tell everyone so that “they’ll hate [her] when it all comes out if they learn that [she] knew about it all the time!” (1327, line 70-71). One can respect Antigone’s resolute standing on what should be done in this situation despite her persistent jabs at her sister because of her opposition. Unfortunately, however, she contradicts herself and in actuality acts as Creon did when she criticized him. In this way, Antigone is hypocritical and therefore loses the credibility that she originally had. Once Creon discovers that she had attempted to bury Polyneices, Antigone wants to have all the glory for it and therefore refuses to let Ismene take partial credit. Ismene, on the other hand, is, in a way, doing exactly what Antigone had preached to her in the earlier part of the play: she remained loyal to her sister and was willing to die for her. But Antigone is able to only focus selfishly on being the one sister to die for her blood. Instead of embracing her sister’s loyalty, Antigone responds to her, “You shall not lessen my death by sharing it.” I think it is a shame that Antigone loses sight of her true reasons for burying Polyneices. She starts out with strong ambition and just incentives but ends up treating herself and Ismene in the same respect as Creon does to Eteocles and Polyneices. (413)

In the novella “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” the realization of death in the future is the only way that Ivan Ilych is able to understand and see life as it truly is. Throughout his entire life, he never lived a full life; his job decisions, his marriage, and friends were all created without passion. Ivan led a hollow life until he grew ill from a seemingly innocent injury and began to the flawed indifference that society had. After his first doctor’s visit, he comes to the conclusion that “for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad,” (pg. 296).

From that day on, Ivan became more aware of the reality of his illness and the fact that his life previous to it was meaningless. I find it ironic that the arrival of death for Ivan is what forced him to realize the fake people and world in which he made a point of surrounding himself. He, who was once a man who took pride in the superficial and hollow social aspects of his life, was now “left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned…and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being,” (pg. 299). Even though he calls this illness a poison, I think that it actually was his one chance to break apart from the pathetic rut that he called life. Although in his eyes he was pitiful and somewhat deserted by his family—wife in particular—as a result of the illness, he ended up shedding his superficial layers and discovering the harsh reality of life under all of the fluff that he once enjoyed so much.

I started out looking down upon and lacking respect for Ivan and his life, but after learning of his “reality slap” and seeing him also hate the very fake and deceiving world that I despised so much, I ended up feeling pity and appreciating his change of person, despite how late it came in his life. I felt relief to know that finally Ivan had realized that everyone was going to die when he said “…they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them,” (pg. 301). That quote is the epitome of the contrast between the life Ivan left and the life he came into after his illness. It is clear that the rest of society has the conception that they will never die, as seen in Peter’s comments at the beginning, however; there is hope that not all are so naïve in the way that Ivan mentions this occasionally throughout the rest of the novella.