Journal #12: Antigone

Anouilh creates a tension between truth and lie. Particularly when Creon admits the truth about Polynices and Eteocles, the tension between Antigone and Creon increases. When Antigone finds out that Creon may have buried Polynices, Antigone second guesses her actions. Maybe it was not worth dying for. She doesn't trust Creon anymore because he lied to her and the entire city.

Journal #11: Antigone

The chorus starts the book as a narrator. He(?) tells the events that have happened but does not get involved with the audience or the story. As the book continues, as tensions grow, the chorus gets more involved. The Chorus starts to play with the audience and gets more emotional and involved in the story. The audience and readers get entangled in the play and tied up in the mystery when-there is none. We all know what will happen but the Chorus plays with us and gives us reality checks. This is so we (as viewers or readers) think about this story in our own lives.

Journal #10: Antigone

Prior to Nurse finding Antigone sneaking into the house:
Eteocles and Polynices both die after Polynices attacks the city.
Creon throws a royal funeral for King Eteocles and becomes King himself.
Creon sets Polynices' body to rot on a hill with guards standing around instructing the city that if anyone try to bury Polynices, they will be killed.
Antigone sneaks out to go bury her brother's body.

Anouilh adds more details as you read farther into the story. This lets the reader (or audience member) create ideas of the characters and develop the characters in their mind as they learn. This makes the story more interesting because people find things out with the characters in the play. It also makes it seem more realistic because you rarely know everything that is happening in real life.

Topic Sentence

Mother compares people to different kinds of flowers in order to express her opinions and feelings towards them without using harsh words.

Journal #9: Blood Wedding

1. The past of each character affects how they live their life and the interactions they have with other character. Lorca tells the past of the characters and the events they have lived through shape their life. For example, Mother no longer trusts Leonardo and is scared for her son to leave because her husband and other son were both killed by Leonardo's familia.
2. Society shapes decisions of many people and sometimes society can only do so much until the person thinks for themselves. This is shown mostly through Bride because she is pushed to marry Bridegroom by the people close to her like Nurse and Father while she really loves Leonardo. The reason that the story turned out badly was because her true feelings came out. If she had admitted her love for Leonardo before the wedding was planned, the deaths could have been avoided but because society pressured her, there was no choice.

Journal #8: Blood Wedding

The set changes throughout the play go along with the mood and tone Lorca is trying to create. Act one starts with yellow rooms that create a happy, light hearted tone. Act 1 Scene 2 is in a pink room with lots of flowers which also indicates a delicate, innocent mood. Scene 3 also is in a lightly colored room but the characters are wearing dark clothes. Throughout the play, the sets gradually become darker and "scarier or more mysterious". The set slowly leads up to the climax of the play where the death is.

Journal #7: Blood Wedding

Which characters appear to be miserable in the play and why?  When and how do the characters express their misery? What do the characters desire and what stops them from going after what each desires?


The Mother is very miserable in the play because she doesn't want her son to leave her because her husband and other son have already died. When her son gets married, he will leave her alone and she can't stand the idea of losing all of the men in her life. She shows most of her misery in the first scene when talking to her son and also some when she is talking to the neighbor. She also doesn't like the Felix family and they are a big influence on her because she hates the whole family and any time they show up in the play, she gets very angry.

Journal #6: Blood Wedding

• When and how does Lorca break the fourth wall?  What is the affect of reminding the reader that the events on the stage are not real? 

Lorca breaks the fourth wall by making the play obviously show that it is not real. His biggest way he does this is through the poetry and songs in the play. I am sure that the culture when this was written was not like high school musical where they break into song at random points. The Mother-in-law and the wife are singing to the baby in the play which may have been a normal baby lulllaby that was popular during that time period but what struck me was that they switched off the lines at different points. The singing at the wedding was another thing. I think that Lorca put this in the play to remind that the audience that it is not real. He also could have done it to draw them to the more important aspects of the play.

Journal #5: Blood Wedding

The biggest archetype in Blood Wedding has to do with the roles and behaviors of women. It is most obviously shown through the mother of the Bridegroom. She shows the normal stereotypes of mothers in that society and most. She doesn't want her son to get married because he is going to leave her and she is scared and sad that he is leaving. She is also very protective which is mostly because of the death of her other son and her husband. She is constantly talking about how much she misses her husband and other son and how much she hates their killers. She matches the archetype of women also because she doesn't leave the house. She works indoor and she just raises her children and cleans. She also wants grandchildren that are boys and girls so there are hard workers and also girls she can teach to cook and clean and sew.
I think Lorca is embracing the archetype and rejecting it. He does characterize the mother as a caring mother but does not throw her to the very edge to say she is too overprotective. But in certain points, the mother is very overprotective. I don't think he is saying it is bad or good but that he is pointing i out and showing there are goods and bad things about the different archetypes. Not just women's roles but all of them that he talks about.

Journal #4: Blood Wedding

One of the symbols I saw in the first scene that helped create the characters was knives. The scene starts as The Bridegroom is going out to the vineyard and he asks his mother for a knife to cut the grapes. This sets up the characteristics of the mother. She goes on a rant about knives and how horrible they are. They should have never been created because they murder. It also explains that her husband and other son were both murdered. The knives that appear from the first page are a big part of the book which ultimately lead to the death of Leonardo and the Bridegroom.

The other symbols that started to appear were plants like flowers or orchards. Mother describes her husband by saying he smells like carnations. She also says "my dead ones, covered with weeds, silent, turned to dust. Two men who were like two geraniums!" (7) She asks what the bridegroom would do with her at the vineyards and asks if he would hide her under the vine leaves. This implies death because people bury their loved ones under ground when they die. Lorca uses plants throughout the play to set a mood. He sometimes uses nice and pretty flowers to explain the good people or to create a calm or happy mood. Vines or weeds have connotations of nakedness or death which appear when talking about dark things throughout the book.