Antigone's Fury

At the mercy of fate, the Sophoclean hero continues to believe in free will. Antigone, cursed daughter of Oedipus, determines to stay true to her beliefs, her ideals – both admirable notions which take her to the grave. She needs to bury her brother’s body; but this is illegal. Her brother Polynices fought against his home state, meaning Thebes’ leaders have denied his proper burial rites. Within minutes of the curtain’s opening (revealing a palatial garden), Antigone thrusts her self-determination into the foreground, and expresses her plans. “I will bury him myself / And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. [. . .] I have longer to please the dead than please the living here” (p. 63). Conviction is more honourable than conformity, and Antigone knows her fate – that her life will soon end. Her belief in the spirit’s guiding power remains unshakeable.

 

Antigone represents the battle between conformity and civil disobedience. It begins with Polynices’ decision to fight against his homeland, hoping to defeat its ruler, his brother Eteocles. (The conflict proves foolish: they both lose their lives.) Later, King Creon muses on Polynices’ punishment: “a proclamation has forbidden the city / to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all. / No, he must be left unburied” (p. 68). This feels like a Grecian form of Rousseau’s social contract, which demands bilateral movement between the state and its citizenry. The state cannot give anything back to a citizen who has betrayed it. Polynices broke the state’s trust; thus, the state nullifies his rights after death.

 

Higher laws drive Antigone’s decisions. She is the antithesis to Creon’s ideas – that the individual’s fidelity to the state is paramount: that “whoever places a friend / above the good of his own country . . . is nothing” (p. 67). Willpower pulses strongly in Antigone’s soul; deep inside, she knows she is right – also that she must suffer for her rigidity. The consequence is death. “Courage!” she proclaims. “I gave myself to death, / long ago, so I might serve the dead” (p. 88). Steadfast throughout, all external efforts hoping to re-shape the demands of Antigone are futile.

 

Over two-thousand years on, Sophocles’ heart-wrenching display of the struggle for free will in a world that casts doom onto its inhabitants still has the ability to sway and move us. When reading the Theban plays, we all know what we’re in for: death, destruction, suffering. We all know how these plays end. But the processes and emotions of characters moving toward horrible fates captivate us – in Aristotle’s terms, ensures that we feel catharsis. Bernard Knox says that all Sophocles’ plays explore “the destinies of human beings who refuse to recognise the limits imposed on the individual will by men and gods” (p. 51). This promises powerful drama. We each view ourselves – the desperate behaviour of humankind – in a dire situation set on destroying us, our shared capability to choose our future.

 

A pre-determined world is a cruel one, and in Sophocles’ tragic web, only death brings solace. Antigone feels confident that the next world will reward her. “[N]o wedding-song in the dusk has crowned my marriage – / I go to wed the lord of the dark waters” (p. 102). Her devotion to Hades, God of the dead, will bring retribution – including destruction on Creon’s part. “Wisdom is by far the greatest part of joy,” sing the citizens at the play’s finish. “The mighty words of the proud are paid in full / with mighty blows of fate, and at long last / those blows will teach us wisdom” (p. 128).

 

Source: “Antigone” in The Three Theban Plays trans. by Robert Fagles (Penguin: London, 1984), pp 33—129.

 

Antigone by Mark Rothko (1939)