Antigone

A detailed Summary of Antigone

In his play, Antigone, Sophocles makes a great interpretation of tragic drama. His genius created a striking conflict between two characters Antigone and Creon that is developed through out the story from the very beginning until the last pages. Both of the characters have their unbreakable ideas and believe regarding unwritten divine law in opposition to human law. Creon stands for the human laws making more priority for it for himself and others as a ruler who has power. In opposition to it, Antigone's main concern is divine law that is higher than any other law created on Earth. She believes that her power is in it and she challenges Creon setting the tragic story as a conflict between these two subjects. This makes the play breathtaking to read even so many years past after it was written.

The conflict was set when Antigone buried her brother Polyneices and broke Creon's law that not allowed doing it because Polyneices was considered as a traitor to Thebes. Immediately as the play starts we run into this divergence in dialog between Antigone and her sister Ismene who does not want to break Creon's law. Antigone agrees that if she breaks this law she will be a criminal, but a "religious one" and reasons that the next world is

As in "Oedipus the King" we see pride that set the story. Both Antigone and Creon are extremely pride individuals and part of Antigone's pride is unwillingness to yield to human laws. Pride here is the source for both strength and self-destruction. Creon and Antigone paid high price to achieve their objectives. They both suffered for intolerance to other side opinion and reluctance to change their own that drove the heroes to the tragic end.

Antigone stands for supremacy of the God's laws that are "unwritten and secure". Antigone's faces a problem with two cross-connected topics like the laws of Gods and principles of morality versus the laws of humans and the power of the state. Although she considers herself to be an agent of the Gods, she has to use her conscience to decide what the will of the heavens is. It comes not from the humans' laws because they are "unwritten", but from some other place outside. Here Sophocles makes very powerful point about personal conscience, even though it was not clear for the ancient Greek auditory. He makes us to think about the existence of principles higher than power of the state makes this play actual in our days.

For us as modern readers Antigone does not look as innocent as it might look like for Greek auditory. It seems that she used the divine laws to achieve her own goals instead of just obeying it. She wants to cover by the power of Gods to abuse Creon's power. She confronts Creon's law even she knows what will be the consequences for doing it. She makes herself a divine prosecutor who wants a trial in a court of one over a criminal according to her beliefs. This criminal is the head of the state Creon who has power and authority to do whatever he wants on his territory. Although, Antigone challenges him using divine laws as a shield and makes Creon to feel angry and powerless. We cannot say that she won this battle even she attained her goal and made Creon to bury Polyneices with honor because of the price Antigone paid for it.

For us as readers all these show not much "right" on the Creon's side. Through out the play he seems to act with ethically unacceptable things. The only thing

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Approximate Word count = 1449
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English