Antigone!

Deborah · Serious Reader

Antigone!

indyandarmysmom · Serious Reader

Check out this website I found!

http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/index2.html

If it is "classical", it's in here!

Michelle

Deborah · Serious Reader

What a find! Thanks for passing it along!

How did we ever get along before the Internet?

--Deborah

indyandarmysmom · Serious Reader

I've got a bit of interesting-ness before I'm off to make dinner!

"Antigone" means the opposite of her ancestors. How interesting is that? Is that because she wants to do what is supposed to be the bigger right (give burial rites to her brother) as opposed to how her father/brother (eww!) and mother behaved?

Deborah · Serious Reader

Wow. The Greeks never wrote or named anything without a purpose, so I definitely think you're onto something with this. Keep the good stuff coming!

--Deborah

indyandarmysmom · Serious Reader

Okee dokeey!

Here is one. I found a book at the library today called "Sophocles - Modern Critical Views". In in there is a chapter by Charles Segal called "Antigone: Death and Love, Hades and Dionysus". Now here is the yummy part. "Antigone stands in an ambiguous relation to civilized values. She does so...as to defend a valid and necessary aspect of civilization, the rights of the family and the proper treatment of the dead." Wow! As a homeschooler this really stood out to me because "the rights of the family over the state" are so important to me, probably the biggest reason that I homeschool in the first place.

Also, on another note, my step daughter noticed that I take notes while I read. I told her that I copy each line of the play in my own words, some of which are pretty funny to me. She said "You can do that?!" I told her I can do what I want, first of all, because it is my study. And second of all, it helps me remember the story, plot and characters better.

Deborah · Serious Reader

"The rights of the family over the state" -- that's exactly the battle homeschoolers fight. It's been so long since I've read Antigone that I've forgotten how it ends (that's why I want to read it again); but I do recall that, though Antigone may lose some battles in this particular fight, ultimately she wins the war. Her values -- and her devotion to them -- shine triumphantly through.

As for "rewriting" while you read -- listen to this. It's from "Joy in the Morning," a wonderful and cheering, just-plain-happy book by Betty Smith, the author of "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." Annie is a very young married woman -- little more than a girl, really -- from turn of the (twentieth) century New York. She had to quit school young to go to work and help her family, but now that she's married and her husband is in college, she's eager -- starved -- to read.

They're extremely broke, but she manages to get her hands on an old copy of War and Peace. She starts to read it, and loves it, but is startled by how difficult it is to keep track of all the different characters and what they're doing. Here's the quote I like:

"She decided there was but one thing to do: Take the book apart and rewrite it in her own way. She had a theory that if she rewrote enough of it, the time would come when she could read straight from the book and sort of translate it in the reading without writing it down."

So you see, you're in good company.

--Deborah