Vengeance In Shakespeare's Hamlet And Sophocles Antigone

The two tragedy plays of Antigone and Hamlet by Sophocles and Shakespeare, describe how far humans are to go when it comes to their loved ones. In the story of Antigone, Antigone has defied the order of not burying her brother Polyneices, believing that her brother should be buried. This sense of disobedience is seen throughout the story. In the story of Hamlet, Hamlet seeks for vengeance, similar to Antigone. Both characters face challenges with the rules put above them, risking to defy the rules, they both receive a different outcome. Both wanted to make things right by defying the rules of their superiority leaders who implied injustice throughout their lands. On the other hand, Hamlet wanted to kill his father while Antigone wanted to bury

Both Hamlet and Antigone share the grief of losing someone important to them. When Antigone’s brothers are killed in Thebes, only one of them, Etecoles, is to be properly buried and the other, Polyneices, is to be not properly buried as he is seen as a traitor to his people. An order is put in place to not bury Polyneices and the person who shall bury him would be punished. Antigone defies that order and goes on, telling Ismene, her sister, on how she would be planning to bury Polyneices since he is still her brother and deserves a proper burial. Ismene disagrees with this since she does not want to put her life at risk by defying an order from King Creon. The use of foreshadowing is used in this passage as Ismene does not want to put her life at risk by defying an order, in which later one she does align with Antigone. Towards the end, Antigone is the one being punished for defying the order and not Ismene, foreshadowing a little to the reader that someone’s life would be put at risk by defying the order. Similarly, in Hamlet, Hamlet accepts the fact of revenge on his father's murderer after his father’s passing. The cause of revenge towards his father was that Cladius wanted power, that desire for power later leaving him to murder his own brother. This is similar to the brothers of Antigone as both Eteocles and Polyneices wanted power, in which they ended up both fighting and murdering

Antigone had been worried about the afterlife of her brother Polyneices, if he were not properly buried, this being the main cause of her actions in defying the decree against the burial of Polyneices. In Hamlet’s view, he is worried about the destiny of his father. The ghost of Hamlet’s father tells Hamlet how he would be “Doom’d for a certain term” if Hamlet would not defy orders and then seek revenge for his father (Scene 5 line 9-13). Both Antigone and Hamlet would defy orders to seek justice in the injustice rules placed by their superiors. They also both show that they care for their loved ones and would want the best for them, dead or alive. A difference they share in this is that in Antigone, comparison of superiority to divine beings such as gods and goddesses is present, while in Hamlet, it is not present. In Antigone, the gods are used to compare the wiseness of them compared to