YMMV / Antigone

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Antigone. Doomed Moral Victor who just wanted peace for her brother, or vain Death Seeker who cared more about the legend she'd become by rebelling and then becoming a martyr?
  • Alternatively, her disillusionment with life in the Anouilh play could be symptomatic of depression.
  • Creon. Stubborn Knight Templar who wanted the best for his city, or crazed tyrant who only cared for the security of his own power?
  • Antigone's behavior to Ismene when Ismene tries to take the blame for the burial with her. Is she being a Jerkass who cuts all ties to her just because Ismene doesn't fit her high standards, and a Hypocrite given that she is willing to die for her love of one sibling despite his crimes while hating another? Or is she pulling a Break Her Heart To Save Her, knowing that Creon now believes Ismene is responsible for the burial and will kill her too, and the only way she can protect her is by making it clear through her anger that Ismene had nothing to do with it?
• Misaimed Fandom: The Vichy government allowed the modern version of this play to be performed simply because they thought that Creon was a model leader. Hardly surprising.
• One-Scene Wonder: Tiresias is one of the earliest examples in all fiction, he gets a single scene in the entire play, but during the course of that scene, he deconstructs Creon's actions in devastating detail, chillingly (and correctly) predicts everything that has gone wrong and will go wrong because of it, insults the King to his face, and waltzes off stage with no repercussions to himself whatsoever.
• Values Dissonance: Modern audiences cannot grasp Antigone's sense of honour and why the burial ritual is so important — more important than preserving life. The key is the ancient Greek belief that without a proper burial, the dead person's soul would be Barred from the Afterlife.
• Values Resonance: Though specifically in a post WWII context. Bernard Knox, the American classicist, noted that during World War II, when the Nazis put Dead Guy on Display of partisans and resistants, and in the immediate aftermath, Antigone found new resonance and the Greek heroine was now seen as a woman who defies corrupt authority to honour her discredited family, claiming to follow the moral code rather than that of the state.

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