Journal #10- Antigone

Events before Nurse catches Antigone sneaking into the house:
-Antigone is sitting by herself, thinking that she is going to die. She will rise against her uncle, the King.
-Haemon is talking to Ismene, Antigone's sister. He is engaged to Antigone, but it happened in an off way. During a ball once, he was dancing with Ismene, but before the dance was over, he went and looked for Antigone and asked to marry her. But Haemene did not know that he will soon die because of this decision.
-Creon, is a King. When Oedipus was King, Creon was no more than a brother-in-law to the King, but now that he is the King, he is a strong King and does his job.
-Eurydice, Creon's wife, sits knitting all the time, until comes the time for her to die.
-The Messenger will soon come to announce Haemon's death. He has a premonition of catastrophe which is why he does not mingle with others.
-The guards sit and play cards, but are always on duty. They do anything they are told, even if it was the arresting of the King himself. They are afraid of their wives, but their children are afraid of them.
-When Oedipus died, his two sons, Eteocles and Polycines agreed that they share the throne of Thebes in alternate years. But when Eteocles refused to step down after his full year, a fight broke between him and his younger brother Polycines. They fought and ended up killing each other, in which Creon had to take over Thebes. Since Creon supported Eteocles, he gave him a proper and honorary burial, whereas Polycines body was ordered by Creon to rot without being buried and without anyone to go into mourning for him.

Anouilh explains the previous days events with the chorus in a normal tone as if they are just telling us a short summary about everything in the past. Although he explains them in short paragraphs, he gives the basics as to lead us towards what to expect. He does this is a way as to prepare us to what will happen. He is revealing the story in the beginning, but he is not revealing what will happen which makes the reader want to know how everything will untie. He also hits the main and important points in the beginning just to give us an overview as to what happened in the past in the kingdom, so we know the reason behind Antigone's want of burying her brother. This structure makes us interpret the characters differently as to who they are. With those little details, we tend to immediately have a thought about whether this character is bad or good. It also makes us also want to know a little more about the back story about each character and the reason as to why they did each thing, so it invokes us as readers to continue reading the book to know more about it. It also gives us a basic view as to what we expect the motivation of the characters to be, but it could be a way to play with our minds, and in the plot, have something else revealed that could shock us since we did not expect it to happen. For example, I see Ismene as this character that is jealous that Haemon chose Antigone rather than her, and is therefor trying to steal him away from her sister. I see Haemon as somewhat unconscious about the things going on around him, and just accepts what he is told. Creon seems like this person that is trying to gain as much power as he can since he is a king now.