On last Wednesday, 25th January,2006, during our two hour class with Dr. Edwin, we had discussed about the personal traits of Creon, the King of Thebes who is also the tragic hero of the play . In the story, the writer has brilliantly portrayed Creon as an arrogant king, not only to his people, but also to the Gods.Through out his conversation with the guard who has come reporting to him about Polyneices’ body being buried, he has showed that he is dogmatic and unwilling to listen to other people’s view. He only believes what he wants to and he accuses the guard of being corrupted by money. The writer also has exposed that Creon can be unreasonable and unfair. This is portrayed when he has threatened the old guard with torment before death if the guard could not catch the person who disobeys Creon’s law.
Creon’s arrogance extends toward his Gods when he actually disobeys the divine’s law and proclaims a new edict of not allowing anyone to bury Polyneices’ body. He even offends and insults Tiresias, the seer and also the one who is given the prophecies. Offending the representative of Gods is offending the Gods also. "Never to break the ancient law is best", but unfortunately,Creon is too late to realise that.The blow of fate has already taken its place.
Some words were given emphasis during the class such as “wise”, “foolish”, and “shrewd”. Being wise is a king’s personal trait. To have a king with wisdom is to have a king who always thinks for his own people’s benefits. Creon, being unreasonable in his actions has acted as God himself and inflicts the unhonourable punishment for the death. For this, he has been foolish as his edict which is the symbol of his haughtiness has brought disaster to himself. Shrewd is a personal trait for the guard, who reports to Creon about the bad news. He has uses his intelligence for his own advantage. He has struggled to defend himself, bragging his loyalty and showing his determination in identifying the one who disobeys Creon’s law.

Last Monday, Dr. Edwin had given our exercise paper back. After that, we had gone through and discussed some of the questions for every set of exercises. Personally, I was very interested to know the themes of this amazing play by Sophocles. This is because when I did write the answer for the theme of Antigone in the exercise, I simply put the theme of free will versus fate and to be truth, I did not really understand the thing I had written. Hehehe…
After struggling to figure out the various themes of Antigone, we, obviously with Dr. Edwin correcting us, had come out with six interesting themes. There are pride, responsibility to family, obedience and loyalty, gender inequality, self determination and sacrifice. The theme of self determination captivated my intention as it is synonymic with Antigone’s personal trait. Her self determination is admirable as she has shown her loyalty and love to her own blood. She has courageously done honourable deed of burying her brother although she knows that death will be her punishment. For that also, she has proved her obedience towards her Gods, and for her, eternal life after death is preferable than living with the guilt for the death.
In contrast to Antigone, Ismene is faint-hearted and submits to the society’s idea that women are weak and cannot be equal to men. She prefers other option from Antigone; she obeys Creon’s law and fervently hopes that the death will forgive her.

On 18th and 20th of January, 2006, Dr. Edwin had not coming in to the class, but 'luckily' we were all assigned to do some answering in the task sheets he had given on the previous day. Probably, he was quite afraid that we would be bored, doing nothing in the class!haha...Actually, we sweat all through the hours to complete the task as we noticed some of the questions were quite confusing.
I think the questions set in the task sheets that I were to be completed that days were actually very helpful, if not quite difficult to be answered! One of the sets of questions asked about tragic hero and personally, in Sophocles' "Antigone", I choose Creon, the King of Thebes as the tragic hero. For me, Creon is a pity as, though he rules his kingdom, in the end, he has lost both his beloved wife, Eurydice and his only son, Haemon and without them, he also lost happiness in his life.
Because of his inconsideration, overwhelming stubborness and ego, he has sent away his to-be daughter-in-law to a rocky vault to suffer her own actions of burying her brother, Polyneices. But, for me, Antigone has done the right thing! She has chosen to obey God's law, instead of man's law and has preferred honourable life after death instead of feeling guilty and irresponsible for her own blood.The law decreed by Creon is a sign of his doom as this means disobeying Gods' law, as leaving other human dead body unburied will anger the gods and creating a plague to Thebes. Here, the element of divine punishment is made an emphasis to highlight that God is more powerful than human beings!

This is the first time for me to post a blog on-line and I guess this is what we call life. We will always learn and do new things in our life.From somewhere I have read before, probably in one of Shakepeare's poems, he compared life with stage and we are the players and the actors, acting on the stage of life. So much so, back in a few weeks before, I think Dr. Edwin who told us that we are all actors, playing roles in our life. We, the students are acting as his clients!
Enough of that, here, I would like to recapture and try to put into words what I have learnt in my teaching the language of drama class. On last Monday, 16th January, 2006, during our one hour class with Dr.Edwin, we have started learning a playwright, entitled “Antigone”, which was written by Sophocles. The Greek tragedy has portrayed how someone from the advantage and honourable position such as the protagonist herself, Antigone has fallen down because of her own actions. The element of fate itself also has taken a great role in contributing towards this tragedy.
During our class, Dr. Edwin also highlighted how the playwright has used words and language to portray and describe the play. For example, the use of word “think”, articulated by Ismene to Antigone in the first scene suggests that Antigone is not thinking and the word is repeated as to urge Antigone to think harder and be practical of the situation that they both are facing.It is a wonder that literary products can be so laden with meanings, yet the words been used are so minimal. Hopefully, I can somehow produce a literary works in the future, but it is not an oath, just a wish!
That day, we were also made clear that as a teacher, we must be used to the jargons used in teaching students. For example, when referring to the drama text, we were continuously making reference using the line numbers in the text. For me, it was a great reminder as I previously, did not care to use line number reference while reading a drama text and it was great to realize that these jargons are important as I will also introduce the terms to my future students. I think, that is all for now!

January 16,2006