Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature

1002 sophocles

to one’s death—is almost incomprehensible. Devo-
tion to family then, is one of the more confusing
themes to be found in Sophocles’ Antigone.
To Sophocles’ contemporaries, the fierce deter-
mination with which Antigone clings to what she
sees as her responsibility to bury the corpse
of her brother, Polyneices, would be completely
understood and approved of. As with all great works
of tragic literature, though, there is no clear-cut,
overarching villain in Antigone. The theme of the
individual’s responsibility to family is further com-
plicated by the fact that Antigone, the protagonist,
and Creon, the antagonist, are blood relatives, as are
all the other major characters in the play. Thus, the
threat to the family comes not from the outside but
from within.
Antigone’s complete refusal to bend is often
and understandably lauded by readers of the play.
At the same time, it is this very impulse that, from
one point of view, drives the play’s action and results
in the destruction of the very family she purports
to value. By the end of the play, Antigone; her
betrothed, Haemon; and his mother, Eurydice, will
all have died by suicide, leaving only Creon and
Ismene as witnesses to the devastation.
A close reading of the text reveals as well that
in Antigone’s devotion to her dead brother Poly-
neices, the curse of Oedipus Rex is still being acted
out in the lives of his children and that on some
level Antigone realizes it. This is evidenced by her
outburst:

Thou hast touched on my bitterest thought,—

awaking the ever-new lament for my sire and

for all the doom given to us, the famed house

of Labdacus. Alas for the horrors of the

mother’s bed! alas for the wretched mother’s

slumber at the side of her own son,—and my

sire! From what manner of parents did I take

my miserable being! And to them I go thus,

accursed, unwed, to share their home. Alas,

my brother, ill-starred in thy marriage, in thy

death thou hast undone my life!

It is this devotion that drives her to defy Creon’s
order that Polyneices remain unburied and left as
carrion for the birds and dogs of the field.

For most of the play, Antigone rails against

Creon’s decree on the grounds that it runs counter

to the will of the gods and that to leave a body

unburied is an insult to Hades, the lord of the

underworld. Toward the end, though, when she is

being led to the cave where Creon has ordered she

be left to starve to death, she makes an assertion that

has startled readers of the play for centuries, so much

so that some critics insist it is an interpolation by

another author for reasons known only to him—or

her—self. Antigone laments:

Never had been a mother of children, or if

a husband had been mouldering in death,

would I have taken this task upon me in the

city’s despite. What law, ye ask, is my warrant

for that word? The husband lost, another

might have been found, and child from

another, to replace the first-born: but, father

and mother hidden with Hades, no brother’s

life could ever bloom for me again.

Her admission that only for a brother would she

make the ultimate sacrifice seems to run counter

to what she has insisted has been the impetus of

all her actions in the play, but in reality it is yet

another working out of the overarching importance

of family, and as such it proves to be also one of the

underlying motivations that, though unvoiced and

unidentified until the end, has driven her all along.

By the end of the play, the crimes of patricide

and incest that stalk the house of Oedipus ultimately

come full circle, and the family that has been of such

importance to Antigone is left ruined.

Grant Sisk

IndIvIduaL and SocIety in Antigone

Sophocles’ tragic play Antigone was probably written

in or before 442 b.c. Set in ancient Thebes, it takes

for its subject the final working out of the curse on

the house of Oedipus. One of the more prevalent

themes sounded in the play deals with the problem

of individual conscience versus the directives of the

polis, or city-state.

After the exile of King Oedipus for patricide

(the murder of his father) and his incestuous mar-

riage with Jocasta, his mother, his two sons, Polynei-