1) In both Antigone and The Stranger, the protagonists experience the death of a close family member which affects them differently - Antigone wants to properly bury her brother while Mersault remains detached. 2) Their reactions go against societal laws/norms, with Antigone burying her brother illegally and Mersault not mourning his mother. As a result, they are both sentenced to death. 3) Their passionate actions to follow their own beliefs, rather than reason, end up harming their romantic partners - Haemon commits suicide over Antigone's death, and Marie is distressed by Mersault's impending execution.

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Emmanuel Castaño
James Fitzgerald
IB A1 English SL Year 2
February 10, 2012
Natural Law’s Effect on Fate
In the play Antigone, by Sophocles and novel The Stranger, by Albert Camus, the authors
include very similar events throughout the stories that lead to the protagonists reaching very
similar fates. In these two stories, both of the protagonists, Antigone and Mersault, lose close
family members, and are then judged for the way they choose to react to this. Throughout the
two stories, the theme of passion versus reason is present in the protagonists’ decisions as their
actions against the positive law, which they take for what they believe in, seal their fates and hurt
their lovers.
At the start of both stories, one of the protagonists’ family members passes away, which,
affects both protagonists negatively. At the beginning of The Stranger, Mersault’s mother passes
away. Despite what happened, he remains apathetic about this and continues living his life
normally. The day after his mother was buried, as he was shaving in the morning, he, “wondered
what [he] was going to do and [he] decided to go for a swim” (Camus 19). Mersault does exactly
as he pleases and goes to the beach, meets a girl named Marie, and spends the night with her.
Although most people would never think of doing such a thing and would stay at home mourning
the death of their relative instead, Mersault’s actions demonstrate that he is a dethatched person.
In Antigone, one of Antigone’s two brothers is killed but is not given a proper burial because he

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is thought to have died as a traitor. However, Antigone cannot let her brother be dishonored,
especially since, in that time period, without a proper burial the souls of the deceased could not
cross the river Styx and continue to potentially enter Elysium, the Greek equivalent of heaven for
heroes and virtuous souls. She is set on following the natural law and tells Ismene, her sister, “I
will bury him. It is noble for me to die doing this,” (Sophocles 63-64) and, “If you like, go on
dishonouring the laws honoured by the gods,” (Sophocles 66-67). This shows Antigone’s passion
for what she believes in.
The protagonists’ reactions toward the deaths of their family members seal their fates due
to the response the authorities have to their actions. Antigone’s brother is killed and not buried
properly. She then chooses to follow the natural law, or what her she thought was right according
to her morals, and acted against the positive law, the law of society, to bury her brother properly.
In this situation, society’s law was that of the king of Thebes, Creon. She sneaks out of the castle
at night while everyone is asleep to bury him. She is caught; however, she challenges Creon’s
legislative authority, and justifies her actions by saying, “I will lie there with him, loved by the
one I love, guilty of the crime of holy reverence” (Sophocles 64-65). Her conviction expresses
the pride she has in her faith of her gods and of her sense of honor to her family. Creon shares
her faith in the same set of deities, however, he believes that the positive law overrides their
natural law. He believes that, “even if the eagles of Zeus care to plunder the carrion body and
take it to the throne of Zeus; not even in fear of that pollution will I allow him to be buried,”
(Sophocles 1007-1009) and therefore, Creon sentences Antigone to death. Nevertheless,
Antigone, being aware that these would be the consequences to her actions, goes against reason

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to act on something she is passionate about. When Mersault kills a man and goes to court, the
judge sentences him to death, even though most of the prosecutor’s arguments attacked him, not
for killing a man, but because of the indifference he has towards his mother’s death. Mersault is
referred to as, “Monsieur Antichrist,” (Camus 71) and a monster, and is looked down upon by
the authorities. Mersault allows himself to be sentenced to death simply so that does not need to
go against his morals, his idea of the natural law, and lie. If he told to the judge untrue things
about his beliefs or pretended to feel grief about his mother’s death, he would be going against
what he believed in but would not have been sentenced to death. In both situations, the
protagonists acted for what they believed in, in spite of the consequences they knew they would
face, because of their passion for the decisions that they took.
By being sentenced to death, the protagonists’ current partners are hurt because of the
protagonists’ decisions. In The Stranger, Mersault’s new girlfriend, Marie, hopes that he will be
freed from his death sentence and asks Mersault if she loves him. Mersault is once again
indifferent about this but simply agrees with what Marie wants him to say. This makes his
impending death more painful for Marie. In Antigone, when Antigone’s boyfriend, Haemon,
realizes he has nothing to do about Antigone’s death sentence, he decides that he does not have a
reason to live and chooses to hang himself. Antigone’s actions brought her lover to kill himself
and therefore did not only affect her, but him as well. Both of these acts of passion for their
beliefs harm the lovers of the protagonists simply because they decided to follow the natural law
and do what they thought was right, instead of listening to reason, whether it came from a
younger sister, or common sense.

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In Antigone and The Stranger, the authors set their protagonists’ fates by causing their
decision to follow their own morals on how to react to a family member’s death to conflict with
the view of their societies. Their fates also harm their current boyfriend or girlfriend even though
the protagonists knew about the consequences of their actions and that it could lead to hurting
those people. The theme of passion versus reason is predominant in these situations due to the
alternative choices both protagonists had but did not take. These existentialist works convey the
message that one’s own beliefs cannot withstand the prejudice of society’s standards if they do
not coincide, despite how honorable standing up for them may be.