Antigone Take Home Quiz

On a separate sheet of paper, please type your answer to FIVE of the following eight
questions. Each response should be between 100-200 words. Your response should
begin with a thesis statement and include support. Please do not work with other
students or share answers. Submitted work that closely and suspiciously resembles
another students will result in a conference and maybe zero credit -- and will make me
less likely to offer alternate assessments to the class in the future.
1. How is Creon characterized in the play? Is he an unreasonable tyrant or just
working in the best interest of Thebes -- or something else? Find evidence to support
your answer.

2. What is the role of the gods in the play? How much of human destiny do they
control? How much choice to the characters have? What examples of free choice do
you see?

3. Is the play about Antigone or Creon? Who is the protagonist? Who is the tragic
hero? Why? Support your claims with evidence.

4. Gender and age are both creators of hierarchy in the play. Haemon is younger
and Antigone is a woman, thus they are meant to obey the king. In what way does
Sophocles undermine this traditional way of thinking? What role does the chorus,
comprising old men, serve in mediating this hierarchy?

5. What role does the chorus play? Trace the chorus influence and input.
Consider the advice/commentary they give to Creon and Antigone and how it is
received.

6. Who has done the greater wrong, Antigone for acting against the law or Ismene
for not obeying tradition? What about Creon and Antigone? Who is more clearly wrong?
Why?

7. What values do the Greeks prize so much that they made Antigone, despite her
character flaws, such a heroine?

8. Despite Creons rough personality, he does try to act in the interest of the city.
He buries Polyneices before rescuing Antigone, which is what needs to be done to make

right his offense to the gods. When he shuts Antigone in the cave, he doesnt kill her.
Why is this?