Alienation Techniques

Victoria, Hayley, Matias

What is Alienation?

Alienation
- Defined as the act of alienating, or of causing someone to become indifferent or
hostile or the state of being alienated, withdrawn, or isolated from the objective
world, as through indifference or disaffection
- Alienation has a complex relationship with change and modernization
-

In Antigone, the conflict of secular and divine law fosters alienation

Alienation techniques
- Gender, appearance, and femininity
-

She paradoxically resents her gender but also her lack of femininity

- Social ideals
-

Her odd and abstract ideals on death isolate her from other characters

- Class
-

Antigone and Ismene both share a horror of common people

- Distancing effect
-

Forces the audience to intellectually understand the plot and the characters problems instead of
subconsciously empathizing with them
Employed in theatre pioneer Bertolt Brechts 1948 production of Antigone

Alienation in the Prologue

- In the Prologue there are multiple ways that the speaker
alienates Antigone
- Refers to antigone as the Thin girl sitting there silent as well as the thin
dark girl whose family didnt take her seriously.
- The speaker also says that She has felt herself hurtling further and further
away from her sister Ismene
- They shows us the differences between the two sisters. Antigone sat
dreaming in a corner with her arms around her knees, versus her sister
Ismene was in peals of laughter among the young men.

Interactive Activity
- 5 Groups
- Pages 30-40
-

Best example of Alienation

- Discuss
-

Reasoning, Significance

- Which is best?

Bibliography
Samellas, Antigone. Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50-600
A.D.). Bern: Peter Lang, 2010. Print.
"Reference.com - A Free Online Encyclopedia & Information Reference."Reference.
com.N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://www.reference.com/>.
Anouilh, Jean. Antigone. Trans. Barbara Bray. Ed. Ted Freeman. London: Methuen,
2000. Print.
Brecht, Bertolt, and John Willett. Brecht on Theatre; the Development of an Aesthetic.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1964. Print.