Antigone

Antigone is a great tale about the daughter of Oedipus and her desire to bury her dead brother. The story is a great tragedy in the classical sense. Most people think that a tragedy is when a story involves the untimely death of the main character. In times of classical Greece, the definition of a tragedy is as such:

A great person (supposedly greater than the audience would have been), through a great fault - whether it be the excessive pride of hubris or otherwise - causes his or her own downfall, and this downfall is an unavoidable one.

Now knowing the definition, we now can examine whether this story fits the classical definition.

The daughter of a king, currently the actual queen of Thebes, is indeed of a greater social stature than most Greeks at the time. She does indeed cause her own downfall, and her great character flaw is the unbreakable stubbornness seen in not only her, but also Oedipus (remember how steadfast he was in denying the facts that showed he killed his father and married his mother), and even Laius (in the attempt of denying Delphic prophecy, which is actually the word of Apollo himself). This is probably one of the best examples of tragedy in Greek literature, and it is a fitting sequel to Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus.

One thing that stuck with me in this play was how vividly Antigone remembered Polynices' act of kindness, which eventually became the reason that she was so headstrong in her resolve to bury him. Apparently, he was the only sibling that was ever nice to her, which is tragic in itself. The most striking thing about this play was the resemblance to Romeo and Juliet. In fact, if I didn't know better, I would think that the play about the two lovers was in fact based on either the ending of this play... or the other Greek myth about the two lovers that have to speak through a hole in the wall and then they mistime some things and.. both die yeah I can't remember the name of that one. So yeah.