Antigone, Jean Anouilh’s main character in her epic retelling of Antigone is the girl who defied a king, and in doing so showed extreme courage and force of will to accept her fate, even in the face of her ideals being sundered. Paulina, the main character in Ariel Dorfman’s death and the maiden is a woman haunted by a sordid past and the inability to forgive. What do these two women have in common in their respective plays? What they have is strength of spirit, and the fact that they are the driving force behind their plays and through their actions the climax is formed.
Antigone is the person who epitomizes the meaning of strength of spirit. All of her actions in the play directly influence all the other characters, Haemon, Creon, ismene, even Creon’s wife is affected by her actions by the end of the play. The defiance that Antigone shows starts with a very small thing that escalates into a big problem for Creon. That first act of defiance was when Antigone “buries” her brother polynices, even after creon set his decree “ any person who attempts to give him religious burial will himself be put to death” (PG 13) this is the act of defiance that sealed her fate and the fate of others. Yet is she afraid? She knew from the very beginning what was going to happen to her and she resigned herself to it. This is what you could say is the pebble that caused the landslide
Paulina is a woman who has a horrifically troubled past, she was raped and sodomized by several men in a torture camp due to her political beliefs. She is what some would say fortunate to be able to exact her revenge against her captors later on in her life when chance comes knocking at the door with her past as his side fellow. And he comes in the form of Doctor Roberto Miranda, who Paulina knows is the man who raped her. And what does this brave woman do? She gets the courage to take it into her own hands and she ties him up and gags his mouth and puts him on trial for the crimes he committed. Does...