Antigone can be better characterized as following the 5 act structure that Shakespeare used: I. Introduction II. Growth III. Climax IV. Fall V. Catastrophe

Antigone can be better characterized as following the 5 act structure that Shakespeare used: I. Introduction II. Growth III. Climax IV. Fall V. Catastrophe The best example of Shakespeare's structure is in Macbeth I. Introduction. The three witches tell Macbeth that after three things happen, he will be king. II. Growth. The first two of the three happen III. Climax. Macbeth himself kills King Duncan, fulfilling the third prophesy. IV. Fall. Duncan's people figure out that Macbeth committed the murder. V. Catastrophe. They kill Macbeth for the murder. This structure shows that no event is finished until we see the backlash. I also tracked down the original, which comes from the magnificent book "Dickens' Working Notes for his Novels" which I read in college and eventually bought my own copy: "Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style was his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this novel, Little Nell and her Grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As Dickens wrote and published the weekly installments, his good friend John Forster pointed out to Dickens: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't you." Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win." In tragedy, it's: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose". As you see, the dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Little Nell died. Dickens himself admitted that he did not want to kill Nell, but he was a novelist and he had to complete the novel's structure. See: Dickens' [sic] Working Notes for His Novels."