Wave Watcher by Craig Alan Johnson and the play Antigone by Jean Anouilh

Death is a very delicate subject to most people. The details involving a discussion about death most certainly include some topics to be discussed in this comparative essay. People all die for a variety of reasons, be it for an honorable reason, a coward reason etc. Whatever people die for, after they go away, almost always the consequence is the same. After someone’s death, the loved ones, cry and suffer, and might even do something more tragic. Louie is a young talented boy with a different view of the world, but also, he is disabled with a series of health problems. Louie one day sees a little girl drowning and decides to go and try to save her, in the process of saving her he ends up drowning himself. While, Antigone is a young intelligent girl, who at times is very selfish and immature, and one day decides she wants to die, and therefore commits a series of “crimes” in order to be punished with the death sentence. In the novel Wave Watcher by Craig Alan Johnson and the play Antigone by Jean Anouilh, Louie and Antigone die for totally remote causes, but their deaths result in the consequences.

In the play, Antigone, one of the main characters, dies for selfish reasons. In the play, Antigone dies because she wants to die, contrary to Louie, who dies to save someone else. Antigone is selfish and immature, and only thinks about herself. Throughout the play, the main topic is about Antigone and her thirst for wanting to die, inventing excuses and pretexts for having to die. Creon, Antigone’s uncle, tries to understand why and to whom Antigone so desperately wants to give her life away, and on this excerpt he asks, “ ‘Why are you (Antigone) acting like this, then? To impress other people, those who do believe in it? To set them against me?’ ‘No.’ ‘Not for other people? And not for your brother himself? For whom then?’ ‘No one. Myself.’ ‘You really want to die then?’” (Anouilh, 35). By reading this quote, the reader can see two main things. First, the reader can observe Antigone’s desire to die. When Creon asks you really want to die then?, he is asking a rhetorical question, that is because he already knows the answer as should the reader. The second thing that can be observed, is that Antigone herself admits the reason behind her wanting to pass away.