Antigone

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Sophocles’ drama Antigone presents a variety of idealisms from the Greek world. Sophocles discusses social, moral, and religious values; the role of women; and the roles of leaders; with the audience and utilizes a moral conundrum to communicate these ideals.

Examining the symmetry between Creon and Antigone provides important insights into the themes of the work. The play is about a war between different values as much as it is about the struggle between two strong-willed people. Antigone is struggling against Creon, but she is also struggling against patriarchy, the power of the state, and the rules of larger society. Creon is battling Antigone, but he is also fighting against chaos, disorder, the unraveling of the social fabric. In the twentieth century, the theme of the individual and the individual conscience struggling against the power of law and the state has caught the imagination of audience members most vividly. For modern audiences and the Athenians who first saw Antigone, Creon is the symbol of a certain kind of tyrant. His good intentions, even coupled with his stubbornness and pride, would seem to frustrate shelving Antigone as a play that teaches the clich� lesson of Power corrupts. Creons mistake is not that he puts lust for power ahead of the interests of the state; rather, Creons weakness is an absolute confidence in a certain set of values. Again and again, he praises patriotism, loyalty to fathers, and civil obedience, elevating these values so highly that other kinds of justice are forgotten. His position, however, is in many ways more comfortable for audiences then and now. His view means that there is at least a definite set of guidelines and rules, and the abuses and vagaries of individual conscience are not allowed to pose a threat to social order. Creon fears disorder; in the wake of civil war, his need to establish himself as ruler is clear. Antigones struggle is just as single-minded. Her devotion is to her brother and the dictates of her conscience, through which she claims to know the unwritten laws of God. But Antigones actions are also an affront to important values You went to the extreme of daring / and against the high throne of Justice / you fell, my daughter, grievously (ll. 08-10). The Chorus declares that Antigone is in opposition to the throne of Justice, reminding us that her actions are a threat to order and the institutions of law that protect the good of the people. There are different kinds of justice at work in the play there is the justice of man-made laws and institutions, symbolized by Creon, and the justice of the conscience and morality not written in law, symbolized by Antigone. Antigone proudly defies the laws of men, and suffers at the hands of those laws. Creon, in his pride, defies the laws of the gods and unwritten morality. He suffers at the hands of fate and divine retribution. The Chorus pities both of them while condemning both characters actions

The position of women is an important theme of the play. Sophocles is aware of the impact of gender on Antigone and her choices. In the opening, Ismene reminds her sister that their gender makes them vulnerable, and Ismenes gender seems to have everything to do with her belief in her own powerlessness. Antigone does not stress her own gender explicitly, but the state does. One interpretation of Antigone links the position of women to Antigones fascination with death. She seems hell-bent on being executed, refusing even Ismenes entreaty to do the rites in secret. Creon later accuses her of being in love with death, and her own words do little to refute him. She speaks in this opening of lying down in the earth beside her brother, and her words reveal a morbid kind of longing. The importance of attending to the next world outweighs, in her mind, the importance of human laws. In an oblique way, the play links this willingness to die with Antigones social position as a woman. She is a woman caught between obligations to two different men. The first is her dead brother, and the second is her hostile ruler. But Creon is more than her king he is also her future father-in-law, as well as the man in charge of her well-being since the exile of Oedipus. Her obligations are not only to the abstract state, but to a man with whom she is intimately connected. In this case, struggle against patriarchy is made literal (patriarchy rule of the father), as Antigone clashes with the man who has had a fathers authority over her since she was a child, the same man who is her future father-in-law. The result is that Antigone is restricted and ruled not only by a distant state but by the closest familial relationships indeed, the state is embodied in the men with whom she has these relationships. It is significant that Antigone, out of a sense of duty and filial piety as well as compassion, tirelessly helped Oedipus during his exile. Sophocles depicts her as a long-suffering and faithful aid to Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus, making Oedipus yet another man to whom Antigone was bound by serious obligation. Held by this claustrophobically tight and conflicted system of obligations, the two sisters react in two very different ways. Ismene invokes her own supposed powerlessness as the defense of her inaction, while Antigone commits herself to a series of choices that she knows will result in her own execution. A common statement by critics is that Antigone seems to have a love affair with Death. The idea of a love for death is enforced by a grim symmetry between this love affair and her engagement to Haemon, Creons son. Antigone is a bride-to-be, and though Haemon is devoted to her, her marriage will give her yet another man whom she will have to obey. Eventually, the groom she chooses instead is Death. Her morbid fascination with death may be the reaction of a strong-willed woman who, in life, is caught in a system that divides her between any number of male masters. In line with this reading, one can view Antigone as being frustrated by limitation and intoxicated by the power of martyrdom. This attachment to martyrdom may be part of her motivation‹although clearly, she is also motivated both by a love for her brother and by the conviction that divine law has been disobeyed. But perhaps the death penalty makes the consequences of her action an additional benefit of burying Polyneices, rather than an obstacle. In her culture, the only power she can have is as a martyr, and by committing herself to becoming one she takes her agency back into her own hands.

Sophocles also discusses the proper role of a leader of a polis in Antigone. Creon is meant to represent an improper ruler which is seen through his decree and his obstinance throughout the entire drama, regardless of the consequences that would ensue. Even as Haemon refuses to concede that decreeing a man to not be buried right. Creon and Haemon’s argument brings out much idealism of rulers. In one of the arguments Creon believes that he owns the land, and Haemon merely calls him fools by saying it’s no ity at all, owned by one man alone. This one line communicates that the proper role of a ruler of a city is to work for the people, and not to work for one’s self. The city is not owned by the ruler, but by all the peoples.




Sophocles’ Antigone presents a dilemma often sen in society. If it is law, is it necessarily wrong? Using this theme Sophocles is able to communicate with the audience elements of Greek society but also elements that have survived throughout the centuries until today.



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