Antigone Journal 4

The theme that a tragic flaw of a character ends in harm if not controlled occurs in both Antigone and Oedipus the King. Antigone’s tragic flaw is her defiance to her uncle in order to bring justice to her deceased brother by burying his body. This tragic flaw differs from Oedipus’ flaw which is to find truth about the murderer of the previous king and the facts about his family. Antigone continually defies her uncle in order to satisfy her fate of burying her brother. She is relentless in this task and continues to try to succeed after she finds out she will die if she proceeds and even after her uncle gives her a chance to walk away. Oedipus also gets a chance to walk away, because the oracle says he will not tell him the information regarding his family because it is not enjoyable. Oedipus ignores the warning and pesters the oracle until the information is told. The endings both end with them getting harmed, Antigone committing suicide and Oedipus stabbing his eyes out, because neither controlled their tragic flaw so it proceeded to cause them harm.

Family cannot overcome ever situation is a theme present in Antigone and Oedipus. Even though Antigone is Creon’s uncle, he refuses to give her a special treatment with the law to avoid killing her. Creon gives her to opportunity to stop her defiance, but she continues, forcing him to condemn her to avoid the citizens of Thebes becoming dismayed with him for abusing his powers as king to protect certain people, even if it is a family member. Oedipus searches desperately for the truth about his parents. He loves his wife dearly, but after realizing it was his mother and that he unknowingly killed his own father, Oedipus is unable to overcome this situation, even though he was happy before, and stabs his eyes out in a crude attempt to un-see his actions. In both Antigone and Oedipus, family is unable to stay together to overcome all situations.

Antigone Journal 3

            The comparison of Antigone to the First Guard allows the reader to understand the acceptance that Antigone has for her death. Antigone is motivated to continue to try to bury her brother, even though she knows she will die if she does, because she believes it is fate. The Guard hurts Antigone and is motivated to bring her into the room because it is “[his] business to bring [her] in” (47). Immediately after being taken into a room by the Guard, “Antigone moves to stool and sits” (47) showing her calmness of the situation compared to the nervous Guard who “paces” (47) continually. Antigone attempts to calm the Guard, even though she should be the one pacing because she’s “going to die soon” (48), by asking him questions about his life and occupation. The Guard babbles nervously while Antigone’s responses are “barely audible” (48) because she is calmly absorbed in thought of a way to communicate to others, rather than think of a way to avoid death, because she has accepted her fate of the consequences of her actions. The indirect and direct characterization of Antigone and the Guard through movement and speech show the acceptance Antigone has for her death. Without the comparison to the Guard, Antigone’s actions could have been portrayed as depressed and uncaring of her fate; with the aid of the Guard’s nervous characterization it is clear that Antigone has accepted that her death is inevitable. 

Antigone Journal 2

“Creon. Yes, I could have done that. Only, I felt that it would have been cowardly. I should have been like a workman who turns down a job that has to be done. So I said yes.

Antigone.  So much the worse for you, then. I didn’t say yes. I can say no to anything I think vile, and I don’t have to count the cost. But because you said yes, all that you can do, for all your crown and your trappings, and your guards-all that you can do is to have me killed.

Creon. Listen to me.

Anitgone. If I want to. I don’t have to listen to you if I don’t want to.  You’ve said your yes. There is nothing more you can tell me that I don’t know. You stand there, drinking in my words. [She moves behind chair.] Why is it that you don’t call your guards? I’ll tell you why? You want to hear me out to the end; that’s why.” (35)

In this passage from Antigone, Jean Anouilh uses parallel structure and gesture to show the reader that even a young, seemingly ignorant girl, can prove her power and authority.

            While fighting with her uncle, the king, Creon, Antigone uses parallel structure by ending sentences with the same words in order to show her power and authority. She first says “if I want to,” and the next sentence ends with “I don’t want to“(10-11). The use of this repetitive structure allows her to sound educated and powerful. She is aware the she never “[said] yes,” (6) or gave her word, that she would not try to bury her brother. She rubs it in Creon’s face that she is free to make her own choices which gives her more power, in a way, than Creon who must act righteously and for the good of the people of Thebes to set a good example to keep the citizens loyal. Antigone is wise to her power and uses parallel structure to shed her youthful ignorance and prove her power and authority.

            In the middle of her fight with Creon, Antigone uses a gesture to mock her uncle and show her power. Antigone accuses Creon of being “cowardly,” (2) and he agrees. Directly after her strong parallel structure, Antigone can tell that Creon is engaged and “drinking in [her] words,” (13) and she further proves her authority by “[moving] behind her chair” (13) which is a physical gesture expressing her mockery of her uncle’s cowardliness.  After her gesture, she continued to further taunt Creon by questioning why he hasn’t “call[ed] [his] guards (14). Antigone’s gesture weakens Creon’s power and allows her to have authority and power, rather than seem like an ignorant young girl.  

                

Ali Field

YAY TRAGEDIES! 

Antigone Journal #1

            Anouilh uses the chorus to act as the parados in Antigone. The chorus describes past events such as thinking about the fact that “she is going to die” (3). The chorus also nonchalantly tells the audience what the play is going to be about such as “[Antigone] is about to rise up alone against Creon, her uncle, the King” (3). The description is not really foreshadowing because the chorus does not hint at what is to come, he completely spoils the end, leaving no surprises, including climatic scenes such as “[Antigone] is going to die” (3) and that she “wasn’t meant to hold a husband” (4). The chorus being so blatantly clear about the plot of the play creates a pathos for Antigone because we know her future of being doomed to death even though she does not. 

BNW FINAL JOURNAL!

The motif of pneumatic continued to change throughout the end of BNW. In last third of the book, pneumatic is used to describe objects, rather than women in a sexual way. While talking to one of the world controllers, “Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair” (229). “Pneumatic chair” is a repetition in the last part of the novel because it is frequently repeated. Pneumatic, as I found out during the middle of the novel, means plump. Being plump or pneumatic, I realized after a group discussion, is the “ultimate compliment” because being the right size or comfort is conforming to the “machine,” which is BNW’s version of a ‘perfect’ society. People who are conditioned well and conform to the society long to be called pneumatic because it means they are filling their rule as a citizen. Calling an object, such as a chair, pneumatic is very appealing and a great compliment.

The last part of BNW takes place in the Controller’s study and the lighthouse. The Controller’s study had a secret “large safe set into the wall between the bookshelves” (230). In the “safe” the Controller, Mustafa Mond, had many books including “The Holy Bible” (230). The references to religion and the discovering of Mustafa having a “Bible” shows the hypocritical views of the leader of the society that is so targeted on making everyone happy and creating a “perfect” world. If world controllers can handle religion and history and like it, then society should have the ability to access the books as well. Later, after some discussion, John decided to “[claim] the right to be unhappy,” (240) and chose to move to the lighthouse outside of the society. The lighthouse is the final resting place of John and is where he could express himself and his “unhappiness”. Upon first arriving there, John feels it is “almost too civilizedly luxurious” (244) and feels he needs to give himself more “self-discipline” (240) to purify himself for having such a “luxurious” place when he felt like he didn’t deserve it.

Huxley uses syntax to help show the change in John after leaving civilization and living at the light house. While “he was digging in his garden - digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death - he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again” (254). Although he was physically digging, he has an interruption of his thoughts realizing that he was , “- digging, too in his own mind,” which shocks him because he usually talks using Shakespearian language and seems sure about what he is saying. His thoughts shift to “death-,“ again his thoughts are interrupted which is shown by the syntax of the dash. Death unsettles him and makes him angry and causes him to forcefully “[drive]” the spade into the ground repeatedly.

Shakespearian language continues to be referenced in the final part of BNW. “[John’s] face lit up” (218) when he heard Mustafa speak Shakespearian. He “lit up” out of happiness from someone understanding the “beautiful” (219) language. Mustafa informs John that it’s prohibited because it’s “old” (219) and the controllers “don’t want people to be attracted by old things” (219). John disagrees with people being able to have Shakespeare, but he has no power to allow people to have it. John continues to speak regularly using Shakespeare such as yelling “’strumpet’” (257) because he feels like he can only fully express deep emotions with Shakespeare’s language because it contains passion, which the BNW society lacks. 

BNW Journal #2

The motif of pneumatic continues throughout the second part of the book; it becomes clearer what the author perceives the definition to be. Lenina comments on herself when she is talking to Bernard saying that “’everyone says [she’s] awfully pneumatic’…reflectively patting her own legs” (93). She pats her own legs which shows that pneumatic means thick. She then clarifies by asking if she’s “too plump” (93) confirming the author’s definition of pneumatic is plump, not literally gas filled like the dictionary definition. The second part of the second section of reading has fewer references to ‘pneumatic’. When it is mention again when Lenina and the Savage go to a feely and “sunk in there pneumatic stalls” (167). Huxley’s choice to use pneumatic to describe the stall is interesting because the imagery of the motif has been used strictly to refer to women in an appealing or sexual way. This could be different than the other references because John, the savage, was present and he does not come on to women like civilized men normally would.

The setting of the novel in the second part of Brave New World takes place, partly, outside of London. Bernard and Lenina go to “the Reservation” (102) which is an uncivilized society where “children still are born” (102).  Unlike the civilized community of London, the  people of the Reservation “still preserve their repulsive habits and customs... [of] marriage,…no conditioning,…Christianity,...extinct languages,… ferocious animals…and infectious diseases” (103). The ideas from New Mexico, which is where the Reservation resides, is vastly different than the pristine and exact life of London.  The Reservation contained so much “dirt” (120) that is repulsed Lenina; in a civilized community, “’Civilization is Sterilization’” (121) so no “filth” (121) is present. Linda understand Lenina’s repulsion because she was once civilized and the dirt “used to upset [her]” (120) too and makes her feel “like [she’s] living with lunatics” (121). The juxtaposition between the Reservation and the civilized community is dramatic and crucial to understand the vast differences of the living situations and culture.

The language Huxley uses continues to be descriptive during the second part. Upon finding his mom, Linda, sleeping with Pope, John describes his feelings in a way that no civilized person knows how to, with passion. He claims “his heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty. Empty, and cold, and rather sick, and giddy” (132). No civilized person could have felt the hatred he felt; this hatred fueled his urge to stab Pope. It is clear that Pope is also uncivilized because he acts in a peculiar way by making John “look again into Pope’s eyes” (133) after he is stabbed. John is able to feel things and say things that no civilized person can; he gets this ability from his lack of conditioning, but also from reading Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is a cultural connection to the world today and is not used in the civilized world because the library “contains only books of reference” (163) because allowing them to read other books would “encourage them to indulge in solitary amusement” (163). Really, I feel they do not allow other books because they want everyone to be clones, and books give people ideas about emotions and cultural which the civilization is trying to eliminate. John enjoys Shakespeare because the language is abstract and teaches him words to express his emotions of “hate” (132). Before Shakespeare, John felt like he “never really hated [Pope] because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic” (132) to help him to express a deep emotion that is banned from civilization.  

Ali Field

Brave New World Journal 1

Throughout the first section of Brave New World, motifs such as ‘pneumatic’ are present. Pneumatic, by dictionary definition, means “of or pertaining to air, gases or wind” or compressed air. I do not think of pneumatic as a positive adjective and am curious as to why Huxley chose that phrase. Huxley first uses pneumatic when describing Lenina Crowne by stating that she is “a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic” (44). He uses ‘pneumatic’ as a sexually pleasing term rather than a term regarding air or gas. Huxley later states the people who return from soma-holidays return to the actual world without distractions and spend their time going from “girl to pneumatic girl” (56). He again uses it was a sexual term rather than its dictionary definition. Maybe he uses it meaning voluptuous or beautiful.

Huxley uses great imagery to describe the setting of the novel on the first page. The room of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre had a “harsh thin light [that] glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure… but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory” (3). The setting also incorporates personifications by the lights “hungrily seeking.” The light seeking something through the window and only finding a pristine lab allows the reader to see how people in the novel are going to feel, because they are trapped into doing what they are trained to do and use soma to avoid feeling stress or other negative emotions, which is like finding a pristine lab rather than something that makes them truly happy.

Later, embryos are said to be “like photography film,” which is a simile, (11) because “’they can only stand red light” (11). The students then follow the director into “the sultry darkness” (11) where he “was visible and crimson” (11). I find it peculiar that Huxley would choose to say the darkness was “sultry,” or arousing, when the dark is usually considered to be scary by people nowadays. Possibly, he does this because the darkness is a good thing because they were conditioned to not be afraid of it. Also, the phrase “every one belongs to everyone else” (47) is frequently repeated in the language of the novel. Huxley chose to do this to drill to the reader the difference of the previous society to the new one.

Cultural connections, or history, are often brought up while discussing babies. Babies are no longer “viviparous,” (24) or birthed in the year 632 A.F., they are made in tubes. People do not learn about the past and the topic often causes “blood [to rush] to cheeks” (23-24) because they are embarrassed by the past, which shows that the society has been trained to believe that history is bad and that “historical facts are unpleasant” (24). Later, history is brought up again when the director told the students that “there was something called democracy. As though men were more than physic-chemically equal” (47). The latter sentence has a mockery tone set by the phrase “as though men more than physic-chemically equal” (47) which makes be feel the society laughs at their ancestors for thinking they were important or equal. The controller even states that their “ancestors were so stupid and short sighted” (45) because they wanted to keep their emotions when soma came out. History is never spoken of, accept in the rare occasion where it is mocked, because all books such as “Shakespeare” (51) and bibles were locked away from society. The world leaders keep the books are from the society because it may cause people to realize they are not truly happy and may want to rebel.