Antigone And The Manchurian Candidate: An Analysis

The concept of freedom has a deep root in human history. Since ancient times, people perceive that they are created as free individuals. They looked up their liberty even by wars to remove any coercion, restraints and regulations on their actions. People’s liberty has a substantial role in their lives. Free people employ the power of nature and harness it to dominate the earth. They invent and create various forms of civilization. When ancient Egyptians and Greeks people lived without constraints for their behavior and thoughts, they dug canals, built pyramids, temples and sailed ships in seas. However, when they suffered from constraints of another country, they lived as slaves unable to attain their basic necessities. The play Antigone by Sophocles and the movie the Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer, claim that individuals should practice their freedom. They point out that individuals should tackle the coercion which

Creon enacts the law of no burial for Polynices’s corpse because he was a traitor to their country. Polynices’s sister, Antigone refuses to listen to Creon’s order and she says to her sister, Ismene,” he has no right to keep me from my own.” She stands in the face of Creon’s unjust law to follow her gods’ divine laws, and she buries her brother’s corpse. Creon’s full power isn’t enough to stop Antigone. When Creon knows that Antigone buried her brother’s body, he orders his guard to put Antigone in a cave till she starves to death. Antigone died but she got the glory she aims for rather than leave her brother’s corpse to rot. Obviously, Creon is the foolish man who misunderstands freedom, and he is fascinated in controlling his country by his own unfair laws to satisfy his pride, and he is unfree man like Mrs. Iselin. In this example, the author figures out that human freedom can’t resist the divine