Sophocles, Shakespeare, And Walt Williams
Many great writers -- including these three, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Tennessee Williams -- use illusion in their narratives. This paper will present some instances and passages in which these writers employ illusion in their work.
Sophocles' and Illusion
Interestingly, author Joe Park Poe notes in his book (Heroism and Divine Justice in Sophocles' Philoctetes) that in the plays Antigone and Philoctetes, "The common quality…might be inadequately described as a lack of illusion" (Poe, 1974, p. 6). Instead of illusion as a device, Poe sees "pessimism" and "suffering" in those plays rather than attempts at illusion. The way Sophocles treats his heroes in these two plays is "…variously pathetic, ironic, brutally realistic and perhaps a dozen other adjectives" (Poe, p. 6).
Meanwhile author Mark Ringer disputes Poe's assertions in Ringer's book, Electra and the Empty Urn: Metatheater and Role Playing in Sophocles. According to Ringer, Sophocles' Theban Plays are "flickering 'in and out' of illusion" and the playwright understands that drama "deals in illusion, in the creative tension of one person or object" that represents something other than what is apparent (Ringer, 1998, p. 67).
After all, the "fundamental" issues presented in Sophocles' tragedies are "appearance vs. reality," and Sophocles has the "keenest appreciation" for that gap between perception and reality (Ringer, 68). The "illusion-versus-reality" motif in Antigone is a hugely important part of that play; the reality is shown through what Ringer calls the "brutal, corporal world" of Creon and the illusion is the "invisible world of the dead," which Antigone seems to revere.
An example of illusion vs. reality (one of many in Antigone) is the way Sophocles presents Creon -- who launches into these very righteous and noble-sounding speeches and sentiments (an attempt at reality) -- but who is actually saying very little of substance (an illusion of reality). Ringer calls Creon's speeches as "hollow" as the rhetoric of an "egocentric actor" (69).
In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles creates Oedipus as a great...
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