Conflict

A detailed Summary of Conflict

The struggle between right and wrong, the demands between family and that of the government, and the ultimate struggle between divine law and those made by man is the center of Sophocles' Antigone. Through this expression of Greek drama, a sense of what life must have been like in the time of Sophocles comes across. In his world, women are subjugated and supposed to be silent spectators to the world around them as men's search for power leads to incredible acts against both human and divine law. Antigone is a woman who firmly believed in these divine laws and whose actions changed the course of Thebian history.

The story of Antigone begins much sooner than the famous play makes known. It is filled with tragedy. Antigone is the daughter of the late king of Thebes, Oedipus. A seer told Oedipus' own father, at the birth of his son that the king would be slain by this only son. He would then seize the throne of Thebes. He therefore banished Oedipus in order to maintain power. Years later the omen would come true. Oedipus would seize the Thebian throne, kill the king, and take Jocasta, the late king's wife as his own. Unbeknownst to Oedipus that the man he had slain was his father and that his new wife was in fact his mo

the crime, but she is adamant about her actions. As Creon asks why she would "overstep [the] law," she replies "because it was not Zeus who ordered it, nor justice dweller with the nether gods," signifying the ultimate struggle between the laws governed by man and those governed by the gods. Despite the fact that Antigone is of his sister's womb and that his own son Haemon is betrothed to her, Creon decrees that she is to be put to death.

The struggle between Creon's own thoughts and the laws set before him in his religion are seen as the seer Tiresias first enters the story. He has been undoubted in the past because his predictions have always been correct, but when Creon is asked by the reverend to rethink his position on Antigone and Polynices, the king is adamant. He tells the seer "Not even for horror at such sacrilege will I permit his burial ...when for the sake of gain they speak foul treason with a fair outside..." As Antigone is being led to her death, Tiresias' warnings are being ignored. As his own final omen is being delivered to the deaf ears of the king, the seer obliges to say that death will be repaid by death, [Creon] will "learn to keep a tongue more gentle, and a brain more sober, than he carries now."

when she hears of her son's death. Creon is left to ponder over his actions and to take full responsibility for the deaths of three people whom he cared about.

This play is as true today as it was in the time of Sophocles in terms of the struggle of humans to find a median where th

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Approximate Word count = 1028
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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