Journal #10- Antigone

In the days before Antigone is caught sneaking out, the following occurs: Polynices and Eteocles have died at the hands of each other because the brothers fought over rule of Thebes. Since Eteocles did not live up to his word that he'd give the rule over to Polynices after one year, Polynices brought in foreign armies in order to get his power back. Now, Creon is king and he won't let Polynices have a proper burial because of his betrayal. Also, Antigone has been proposed to by Creon's son Haemon. Also, the very night before the scene with the nurse, Antigone has gone out an buried her brother. I think that this array Anouilh presents for the audience an interesting viewpoint of the play. First off, this is all told by the Chorus. I feel that Anouilh decides to do this because he wants to stay true to the Greek play writing tradition, but this also allows him to not have to retell the story in terms of having the players act out the previous events (which would take an enormous amount of time). Also, with complex stories such as this one, it is easier to just come out and tell what's happening to get to the meat of the story rather than dispersing it out.   One of the reasons why great authors of tragedy come out from the beginning about a character's death or downfall is that the audience isn't anticipating what is going to happen to a character and misread the plot line, but instead look at the details of the play to be able to understand its intricacies. In novels, it is usually ok to disperse back story throughout the book, but it is harder to do that in terms of plays.  It was only after reading the play a few times that I realized the chronology of events in a somewhat uniform matter. I think that Anouilh may also be showing how story telling is often hard to do in terms of sequences and actions because usually more than one event is going on. Finally, I believe that the play is trying to show confusion when showing the truth of the matter, because all too often how the truth comes out of a faulty human memory shows how the truth is blurred a bit from one perspective.