Antigone Individual Reader-Response Journal
As you are reading and discussing Sophocles’ Antigone in class, you should be
spending some time reflecting on the play on your own. You should independently
be thinking and writing about your own reactions to the play in a Reader-Response
Journal. You will have three dated entries, one for each of your during reading
activities. You may choose a different topic for each.
For your four during reading activities, please select one of the topics below. Base
your responses only on the reading that your team has done up until that point.
Your reader response journal will be evaluated on your ability to answer the questions
with:
 Strongly developed explanations
 Support for your ideas – quotations and specific details
 Special attention to GSP and MLA quotation rules
 Antigone vocabulary words – use and circle eight (total) anywhere in
your responses
You may type and double-space your entry or compose a neatly written entry with
blue or black ink only.
Please note: You will compile all reader-response journal entries and submit them as
one post-reading project for Antigone. (You will be checked for rough drafts before
the final due date)
Along with your written response, include any visuals you’d like,
(sketches, drawings, collages, symbols, etc…). You may include pictures for each
journal, as a cover, or to clarify an idea. For the final project, you are responsible for
including some sort of visual piece.
Topics:
1. Can you connect any of the characters, conflicts, thematic issues, setting, etc. with
something else you’ve seen, heard, discussed, studied, and/or read before, in other
classes, or in your life?
2. Choose one character, and discuss how s/he reveals something about the values,
issues, and/or dilemmas of the human condition (THEME). Incorporate theme
topics and statements into your discussion.
3. With which character do you identify most closely? Explain.
4. Compare and contrast two characters. As a source of comparison, consider the
characters’ personality traits (your inferences), needs and values.
5. Discuss the function/purpose of one, or more, of the minor characters in the play.
6. Select, and cite, one choral ode, and discuss its meaning. (Consider and
incorporate the meaning of the Chorus’ allusions into your discussion.)
7. Explain the triangular conflict of the play. (Consult the introduction and notes.)
8. Discuss how the Oedipodean family history impacts Antigone’s life.
9. Share a personal anecdote that connects a major theme in Antigone with your own
life. Be sure to explain the specifics of how your life experience and the play’s major
theme compare and contrast..
10. Think about your knowledge and understanding of Ancient Greek times,
Greek theater, and Sophocles’ life. A) What inferences can you make about this play’s
cultural/human representations of its time? (What role did the literature play then,
and what did it represent?) B) What are your perceptions on why we still read
Antigone today? (What ideas/thinking does the play represent, in 5th Century Greece
and today?) C) What have you learned through your Antigone experience?
11. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, which character do you identify as the tragic
hero, and why?
12. Explain how Antigone illustrates Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy.