Antigone, by Sophocles | Analysis

Antigone, by Sophocles | Analysis Antigone is a tragedy book written by Sophocles with a protagonist named Antigone who is very determined towards her only goal of burying her dead brother Polynices as mentioned in the play. At the other side full of contrast and with a different point of view is the book House of the spirits. House of spirits is a magnificent marathon of the Trueba family including their ambitions and their love for each other. In order to enable the readers continue reading to the very end of the whole book, their attention needs to be captured and allow whatever they are reading to be understood and interesting. And for all this to be done, the reader should be involved in the story emotionally ensuring that the reader is fully in the book and not to be fully lost in the story. This is where the writers take the advantage of using emotions which makes a reader feel closer to certain characters and understand each and every thing the writer is trying to portray. Emotions!! We all have different definitions and ways of what it is. According to the dictionary, emotion is a mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes. Therefore, in simpler terms, emotion is the language of a persons internal state of being. There are different types of emotions which may include joy, love, sad etc. There are various emotions present in both the books Antigone and House of the Spirits. The emotion portrayed most of the times in each of the books is Love. As a reader, we repeatedly see the emotion of love in House of the Spirits between Blanca and Pedro, Rosa and Esteban. The emotion of love is also present in Antigone between Antigone and Haemon. There is also brother-sister love presented in the play through Antigone and the dead brother Polynices. The other emotion present in both the books is emotion of hate. According to the dictionary, hate is defined as the feeling for extreme aversion or extreme hostility towards something or someone. The emotion of hate in Antigone is brought about through King Creon towards the protagonist Antigone. Throughout the play, we see King Creons hatred for the protagonist Antigone in one way or the other. Creon expresses his disgust for Antigone when she goes against him and buries her brother and argues back that she was right in doing what she had done and wasnt at all guilty, oh but I hate it even more when a traitor, caught red-handed tries to glorify his crimes.Such a harsh usage of the word hate emphasizes on how much he hates his own niece. Emotion of hate is also present in the novel House of the spirits. We see hatred from Ferula towards Esteban when he is chasing her from his house. I set my curse on you, Esteban; you will always be alone! Your body and soul will shrivel up and youll die like a dog. Reading this quote explains us how much other people are hurt through Estebans hate. There is also an emotion of pity present in the play Antigone and the novel house of spirits. This is represented at the beginning of the play through a conversation between Antigone and her sister Ismene. During the conversation, we get to know that the two sisters lost their father in a certain battle and their brothers at the same time and then we as the readers come to know that one of the brothers, Polynices, has been left unburied. And this makes us feel pity for the two sisters. There is an emotion of desire in both House of spirits and Antigone. Desire is a sense of jones within the mind, when the soul has a hungry requirement for a specific item. And in Antigone, we see this through King Creon desiring power. Through the play we see King Creons desire for power being expressed straightly through his words, That these two sisters were aiming at my throne. We see King Creon accusing the two sisters of trying to steal his power. And moreover his overwhelming desire made him think and believe that all the things happening are plans to gain his power. We experience the emotion of desire repeatedly in the novel house of the spirits through different characters. In the start, we feel Estebans desire to gain a better living standard to gain Rosa. Those were difficult times. I was about twenty-five then, but I felt as if I had only a little life left ahead of me to build my future and attain the position that I wanted. I worked like a beast and the few times I sat down to rest, not by choice but forced by the tedium of Sunday afternoons, I felt as if I were losing precious moments of my life: each idle minute meant another country away from Rosa. This clarifies that Esteban desired Rosa from his whole heart. After which we see his desire to rescue Alba from the government. There was also Blancas desire for Pedro Tercero and Esteban Garcias desire to be the heir of Esteban Trueba. Guilt is a powerful emotion because it makes people act differently than they normally act. There is also an emotion of guilt which is involved in both the play and the novel. In house of spirits, we all see that Blanca was forced to marry Jean de Satigny because she was pregnant and had no other option for her forbidden pregnancy and Jean de Satigny had no refusal towards this relationship because he had always wanted to marry a rich, young, beautiful South American heiress. And he knows that accepting this grand offer by Esteban Trueba would enable his dream come true and there was nothing for him to lose and just to gain as he didnt needed any personal fulfillment from Blanca and accepting the offer would certainly lead to advancement in his status. At the other side, emotion of guilt in Antigone is presented in scene 2 when Antigone is caught but she does not believe she has broken a true law. Creon also arrests Ismene, who tries to proclaim her guilt, but Antigone denies her and Antigone is sentenced to death. This is a bit where we experience the emotion of guilt. Emotions play a huge role towards seeking the readers attention. Having emotions in a certain novel or play attracts the readers attention and involves them into the story emotionally and to understand what the writer was trying to portray and understand the character traits by being in their position emotionally. Emotions used both in House of the spirits and Antigone had a grand effect on the readers both mentally and physically. The readers were able to understand each situation very well through the emotions brought about. For reference, in House of spirits, when we read on how Blanca used to escape at nights to meet Pedro, we extrapolate that they love each other basing on how they used to meet. We feel sad for the two sisters in Antigone when we read that they lost their father and both the brothers at the same time and one of them is still left unburied. Emotions enable to bring out the themes of the novel and the play hence allowing more understanding from the readers side. Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest: Literature Review Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest: Literature Review Go back to your writing sample from week one. Remember that it should be written as though for a university assignment. This means adhering to a structure that includes an opening statement, development paragraphs, and a conclusion. It should be no longer than 500 words long. Using Google Scholar or the search engine from your university library, search for five academic sources dealing with the same topic as the one you wrote about; these will have to be relevant to the points you want to make in your writing and support your argument or idea. Include two short quotations and three paraphrases of significant parts of the academic sources you use to support your argument. Add appropriate in-text citations and a reference list, which shows the full records of the 5 cited sources, listed in alphabetical order. Ensure that all your referencing adheres to the Chicago 16th Author-Date system. Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest is having a devastating effect on the environment. The Amazon Rainforest is the largest rainforest on Earth. Covering an area of five and a half million square kilometres, it is composed of a diversity of ecosystems forming the Amazon Basin that drains into the Amazon River. Although deforestation can occur naturally through events such as droughts that cause many trees to die, human intervention is the most prolific cause. Rising population levels within the Amazon basin have contributed to an escalation in the deforestation of the rainforest. This is due to urbanisation and an increased demand for timber to be used in building and commercial production of items such as paper, furniture and palm oil. Deforestation has a negative impact on the local environment of the Amazon. As the forest is removed the soil loses its anchor point and it is steadily eroded, most notably during the wet season. This contributes to the instability of the remaining trees and pollution of local waterways. The physical removal of the trees removes the habitats and food sources of many animal and insect species that live there. In turn this causes a reduction in diversity of the remaining species and a disruption in the ecosystem of the rainforest. (Lean and Warrilow 1989, 411-413). A study was completed which involved simulating the deforestation of the Amazon tropical rainforest, and replacing it with pastural grazing lands. The results showed a climactic variation of a weakened hydrological cycle, with less precipitation and evaporation and an increase in surface temperature. (Lean and Warrilow 1989, 411-413). The importance of the Amazon rainforest in global environmental issues is largely due to its immense size. Terrestrial plants absorb 25% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide emissions are a by-product of natural processes and human interventions such as burning fossil fuels. Through a process known as sequestering the plants store carbon in their wood and soil. The massive scale of the Amazon and its sequestering capabilities leads to it being referred to as a carbon sink: able to slow the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and therefore its contribution to global warming. It can only be classified as this if it absorbs more carbon dioxide than it releases. By 2015 the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 400 parts per million, this was an increase from the 290 parts per million level recorded at the turn of the century. (Keenan, Trevor, Colin Prentice, Josep Canadell, Christopher Williams, Han Wang, Michael Raupach and James Collatz 2016.) The deforestation of the Amazon rainforest not only decreases the quantity of carbon able to be stored, it also causes a dramatic increase in the levels of carbon being released into the atmosphere by the dead trees. According to the Global Forest Resources Assessment, Main Report (2010), worldwide deforestation releases almost one billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere annually. Although measures are beginning to be implemented to reduce the levels of carbon released into the atmosphere, more needs to be done to prevent levels rising to 600 parts per million-a level the world could reach as early as 2050[m1] (Daniel Grossman 2016, 635). Due to the sheer size of the Amazon rainforest, alterations to its local environment can be felt in other parts of the world. David Werth and Roni Avissar (2002) point out that deforestation in the Amazon has a measurable effect. It can cause a reduction in levels of precipitation and evapotranspiration as well as the formation of clouds. This impact could be felt in several areas around the world, that displayed an increase in the length of their dry seasons. Restoration of the tropical rainforest areas of extensive deforestation could be greatly inhibited due to this increase in temperature and dryness. (Shukra, Nobre and Sellers 1990, 1322-1325). though the numbers are not as high as the ones recorded in the previous decade. Deforestation is the second largest anthropogenic (human-caused) source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest net loss of forest in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their rate of loss, according plays a crucial role in keeping carbon out of our atmosphere, as it naturally absorbs about 28% of the atmospheric carbon emitted by the burning of fossil fuels elsewhere According to Michael Daley, associate professor of environmental science at Lasell College in Newton, Massachusetts, the No. 1 problem caused by deforestation is the impact on the global carbon cycle. Gas molecules that absorb thermal infrared radiation are called greenhouse gases. If greenhouse gases are in large enough quantity, they can force climate change, according to Daley. While oxygen (O2) is the second most abundant gas in our atmosphere, it does not absorb thermal infrared radiation, as greenhouse gases do. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas. In 2012, CO2 accounted for about 82 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Trees can help, though. 300 billion tons of carbon, 40 times the annual greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, is stored in trees, according to Greenpeace. [m1]