The Essences of the Greek Play: The Chorus
... god of the breaking rout of battle, all but two: those blood brothers, one father, one mother -matched in rage, spears matched for the twin conquest- clashed and won the common prize of death”(66). They remind us that even though Thebes came out victorious, it wasn’t a natural war with enemy against enemy, it was a war between blood brothers, in which the outcome could have only been death. Here the chorus kind of acts like the consciousness of the audience, not really giving them some time to enjoy the glory. They’re like the little voice in the back of head that never lets us settle. It’s like they are saying “Yeah you think you won the war, but in case you didn’t know, blood brothers died at the hand of each other, very bad.” From what has been read so far, we know that the chorus functions a lot like a roller coaster. Taking the audience up and down and up and down all throughout the play. In the most famous hymn of the play, given after Creon has announced that the body of Polynices shall not be buried and anyone caught doing so will pay with their life, we see how the chorus does just that of the roller coaster, taking us up and then bringing us right back down. The chorus starts off by stating “Numberless wonders, terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man”(76). The audience starts to get the idea that the chorus is going to mention the things that man can do. “He conquers all, taming with his techniques the prey that roams the cliffs and wild lairs, training the stallion, clamping the yokes across his shaggy neck, and the tireless mountain bull. And speech and thought, quick as the wind..... ready, resourceful man!” (76-77). So within this hymn the chorus mentions all the wonderful things man has done. How he has survived through the worst weather sent down by the gods, how he has tamed all the animals that have come across him and how he has taught himself the laws and built great cities, all of this he has done with the little resources that were given to him.By now the members of the audience are boasting, for everyone in that audience was male and even if your reading it as a member of the other sex, who doesn’t like to hear about all the great things they have accomplished? The chorus has the audience feeling great, smiling from ear to ear. That is until they hear this: “...only Death, from Death alone he will find no rescue but from desperate plagues he has plotted his escape. Man, the master, ingenious past all measure past all dreams, the skills within his grasp- he forges on, now to destruction now again to greatness. When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods that binds his oath together he and his city rise high- but the city casts out the man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless darling”(77). The chorus is telling the audience that there is one thing that man cannot conquer and that is death. For when it comes to death, they are out beaten. So for all those members in the audience that were boasting before, aren’t feeling so hot anymore. Not only is their pride taken down a notch, but their view of Creon might have changed as well. In their hymn they make a reference to how man moves onto destruction, thinking he is moving onto greatness and that only until he makes the laws of the city be hand in hand with those of the gods, he will be cast out by his own people. This could easily be referring to Creon’s decision of not burying Polynices and ignoring the fundamental laws of the gods but placing a law of him own to make sure that Polynices’ burial never happens. The part about the city casting him out, could mean that the people of the city wouldn’t be happy with him, until he does something about it. This influences us in the audience to think, that if the chorus thinks Creon has done wrong, then maybe he has and perhaps he isn’t that great a leader as he leads on, thus changing how we once viewed him. Aside from affecting the views and feeling of the audience towards the events that have been going on with their songs, they also have a lot to do with how the audience feels or reacts toward the characters of the play, in particular the dialogue between them and Antigone. When Antigone is brought in by the Sentry for having buried the body of Polynices, the chorus cannot believe it; “I know her, how can I deny it? That young girl’s Antigone!....They bring you in like a prisoner-why? did you break the king’s laws? Did they take you in some act of mad defiance?”(78). They are shock to see how Antigone is being brought in. The audience gets the feeling that the chorus doesn’t see Antigone as troublemaker and that perhaps this has been the only ...