CENG 201_Final Essay Project CENG 201 Final Essay Project For this assignment: ● You must choose to focus on ONE of the texts we’ve covered (or were in the Syllabus) from this semester: ○ Iliad ○...

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Title: The Concept of Freedom in Antigone
Contents
Introduction    3
The Course of Life and the Role of Fate    3
The Restrictions, Rebellion and Freedom    4
Conclusion    6
Works Cited    8
Introduction
The role of fate and free will is the core essence of Greek tragic plays; the choices that the characters make in these plays are driven from the pre-determined fate. In fact, the concept of writing in Greek tragedies is mainly sourced from the nature of human beings and the way, they can be victimized by the role of their own destiny, towards which they take actions knowingly or unknowingly (Goheen, 21).
It poses questions over their ability to live a so-called ‘free life’ in which they can take actions as per their choices. The life of Oedipus by Sophocles, for example, is fully guided by the prophecy that the Gods had made at the time of his birth. He is destined to kill his father and beget children by ma
ying his own mother. In the later part of the trilogy of Oedipus, his daughter Antigone suffers from the same choice of freedom; she is victimized by her own fate and meets her doom in the end of the play.
The Course of Life and the Role of Fate
    At first, it is significant to note here that the life of Antigone is predetermined by the role of fate because she is born in a family that is subjected to doom. She and her sister Ismene both discuss the same in the first half of the play where the question of ceremonial burial of the two princes is investigated. Eteocles who is on the side of Creon receives the royal burial while the so-called traitor, Polynecies, did not get the same honor.
The irony of fate is that all of these four personalities belong to the family of Oedipus, as they are his sons and daughters (Reitzammer, 4). In some of the last speeches that Oedipus makes in the end of the first part of the trilogy, it is mentioned that the all of these four individuals are subjected to suffer because of their fate. They are born in a family which has no fate at all in future and Sophocles proves it right.
    Additionally, for the sake of getting the kingship of Thebes, the choice of freedom is kept between the Etocles and Polynecies in which, both die unfortunately while fighting the battle against each other. This ends up with the elimination of the two members of the family of Oedipus who assume that they are free to choose in life but in reality, they are bound to the decisions of the Gods. Similarly, Oedipus, their father, was also destined to suffer because he went on to find out the severest truth of his life which made him suffer to death (Goheen, 3).
    In the same context, the present analysis of Antigone, the central character of the play, it can be infe
ed that she does something...