Antigone: Movie vs Book
The play Antigone was written by Sophocles in about 442 B.C. Now back in his day, there were kings, queens, and kingdoms. But things have changed since then and by the time the year got to be 1970, most of that was gone. I’m sure it was hard for the director of the 1970’s version of Antigone to write a script based on a concept most living people have never seen before. So that is probably the reason why the book and the movie are so different. In the book, there are little breaks from the story where the chorus steps in and talks about what is going on, what the gods would say and other things like that. But in the movie, they have a narrator that can talk to the audience and the people in the play. In the beginning of the movie, the narrator starts talking to the audience about the lonely girl sitting on the stairs, Antigone. He gives us some insight into her past, present, and her future. Then later he has a conversation with the Messenger asking “What business do you have with the queen?” After that, he tells Creon that the queen killed herself because she heard about Haemon and Antigone’s suicides. Also, in the movie there is a scene where Antigone and the guard take an elevator and a car to get to a cave where she will be trapped in for burying Polynices. Since this book was written in about 442 B.C, Sophocles would not even know what and elevator or a car was let alone put the both in his book. Back in his day they would have walked to wherever they were going and definitely not to an elevator. Little details like that are what make the book and movie so different. Like the way they talk, dress, and the things that they have in their house is definitely more updated than what Sophocles had in mind. Both in the book and the movie, Antigone asks Haemon to come over but does not tell him why. She does not want him to know that she buried Polynices and was going to be put to death. She talks to him about the fight they had the night before to be sure that