Paper 3 Guidelines
Essay 3, 4-6 pages, double spaced
Becoming a better writer
1. Engage with your sources, look at the text, think about the text, cite the text in your work; please do not try to write your
paper by making vague generalizations
2. Use your imagination. What interests you about the characters you have studied? Following your own curiosity will usually lead
you to write a better paper.
3. Please do not use secondary sources other than those attached.
1. Develop a thesis by contrasting and comparing ideas about either two heroines,
(Antigone and Wonder Woman). You have flexibility in this prompt, however, please do not rehash previous papers you may have
written. Your focus should be on the new material.
2. How is the Antigone myth in Sophocles’ play like or unlike the story of Persephone, as you know it from the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter?
3. Discuss the role of laughter in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Demeter.
4. Discuss the reception of Greek myths about powerful women in classical scholarship about the Amazons, the Wonder Woman comic,
the Wonder Woman movies, and in the reception of Antigone in feminist philosophy. You do not have to discuss everything listed,
these are your range of options.
5. Discuss the morality of the gods as portrayed in Euripides’ Ion. By morality, I am specifically referring to sexual morality.
Who is being criticized in Euripides’ Ion? Is it Apollo? Is it the whole tradition of Greek mythology from Hesiod on? Is it
possible that Apollo stands for Athenian men in general? Or, is the attack and/or satirical portrayal of Apollo really a commentary
on or critique of Athenian imperialism?
6. Develop a thesis about the roles of women in Greek myth by using three of the following sources: Homeric Hymn to Demeter,
Amazons, Antigone, Creousa in the Ion.
7. Do permutations of the Antigone myth – i.e. a young girl who stands up to corrupt patriarchal authority – continue to have
purchase in recent Hollywood movies like the Hunger Games for instance? Why or Why not? You may compare the Antigone with the
Hunger Games for this prompt.
8. How does the morality of the sanctity foundation and its focus on purity and pollution help us understand the Antigone and/or
Ion?