Sophocles Antigone Introduction to English Literature 04 June

Sophocles, Antigone Introduction to English Literature 04, June 16 -19, 2020

Sophocles Biography ¤ Sophocles lived from c. 496 to c. 406 B. C. , during the Golden Age of Athens (480404 B. C. ). ¤ Involved in the war becoming friends with Pericles. ¤ Writing one hundred and twenty-three tragedies, of which only seven remain intact

Theban Trilogy ¤ Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the ¤ Oedipus at Colonus (c. 404 King) (c. 430 B. C. ) ¤ Antigone (c. 442 B. C. ) ¤ All three deal with King Oedipus's tragic fall from power and the ruin of his children.

Antigone Sophocles's message to Pericles on the dangers of authoritarian rule, and the playwright's assertion of the general's need to remain conscious of his duty to the citizens of Athens. ¤ It was the duty of playwrights in Athens to address social and political issues, and this play not only addresses authoritarian rule, but also familial duty and the status of women in society. When Antigone stands up to Creon she not only defies the edict, but also the traditional behavior of Greek women of the time. ¤

Summary ¤ Background. ¤ Antigone vs Ismene. ¤ Creon’s degree. ¤ Chorus’s “Ode to Man. ” ¤ Antigone’s arrest and death sentence. ¤ Haeman’s criticism on Creon’s decision. ¤ Creon’s decision to bury Antigone alive. ¤ Teiresias’s warning to Creon. ¤ Creon’s change of mind and his downfall(Peripateia)

Background The play begins outside the palace of Thebes, not long after invading forces from Argos have successfully been repelled. Polyneices, who sought to overthrow his brother, Eteocles, led the unsuccessful army. During combat, the two brothers—both sons of Oedipus—killed one another, and their uncle, Creon, is now king of Thebes. Antigone and Ismene, sisters of Polyneices and Eteocles, are meeting in secret.

Antigone vs Ismene Antigone has called her sister to meet outside the palace gates for an urgent purpose. Creon is about to issue a decree that will ensure a hero’s burial for Eteocles but leave Polyneices, seen as a traitor, unburied and unmourned. Worse still, Creon is to decree that anyone caught giving Polyneices a burial will be sentenced to death. However, Polyneices is still Antigone’s brother. She believes it is his right to receive a proper burial and intends to give him one herself. She asks Ismene to assist her in the work. Ismene, fearful of a death sentence, refuses. Antigone, who is headstrong and severe, tells Ismene she hates her and leaves to perform the burial on her own.

Creon’s degree Creon appears before the chorus—the elders of Thebes—to declare that the city is safe and that, under his leadership, it will stay on the right course. As such, he makes his decree that Polynices, a traitor who took up arms against the city and killed the former king, Eteocles, must be left to rot without burial. Creon further insists that anyone who is caught attempting to bury the traitor will be sentenced to death by public stoning. At this moment, a sentry enters, informing the king that someone has already given Polyneices his burial rites. As if they were in a rush, they have only performed the minimal requirements, covering the body with dust and pouring out libations. Creon, enraged, orders his guards to find the culprit.

Chorus’s “Ode to Man. ” The chorus then sings a hymn about the wonders that human beings are capable of—while also lacking the ability to avoid death’s inevitable grasp.

Antigone’s arrest and Creon’s death sentence The guards clean the dust from Polyneices’s corpse and move the body elsewhere, and Antigone is subsequently caught trying to rebury the body. The sentry returns to Creon with Antigone as his prisoner. She makes no effort to hide or deny her actions and, when asked, tells the king that she does not care if the penalty is death, because she was only doing what was right in the eyes of the gods. Ismene is summoned, and she tells Creon that she was involved in the plan, but Antigone denies her involvement. Furious at being undermined, Creon sentences Antigone to death.

Haeman’s criticism on Creon’s decision Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé, enters. Having heard that his love is sentenced to death, he tries to reason with his father. Although the discussion begins respectfully, Haemon and Creon become increasingly agitated. Haemon informs his father that the public sentiment in Thebes is sympathetic towards Antigone: most people agree that she was only being pious and does not deserve a death sentence. This infuriates Creon, who feels as though he is being undermined, and he threatens to have Antigone killed in front of Haemon’s eyes. Fearing that his father is falling into tyranny and madness, Haemon warns Creon that Antigone’s execution will produce two corpses, and he exits.

Creon’s decision to bury Antigone alive. Creon then decides that he will no longer execute Antigone by stoning but will instead bury her alive in a tomb until she dies by either starvation or suicide. Antigone is led towards the tomb in which she is to be buried alive. The chorus, representing the people of Thebes, expresses sympathy for Antigone admits that she does not want to die. Before being sealed inside, Antigone expresses her piety toward the gods and curses those who have punished her unjustly.

Teiresias’s warning to Creon Back in the king’s chambers, the blind prophet Teiresias comes before Creon to inform him that he has foreseen misery and death in the future unless the king reverses his decision. Creon, feeling as though the whole city is against him, insists that he will do as he sees fit. Teiresias, however, tells Creon that he is a fool for punishing Antigone in this way, and that he has offended the gods for denying Polyneices a proper burial. The Furies will come to exact vengeance, Teiresias warns, if Creon does not bury Polynices and release Antigone.

Creon’s change of mind and his downfall(Peripateia) Finally seeing his error in judgment, Creon admits that although it hurts his pride to do so, he must heed Teiresias’s warning. He exits with his men to bury Polynices and free Antigone from her tomb. After finally burying Polynices, Creon and his men find that Antogone is already dead, having hanged herself. Haemon, In the depths of his grief, stabbed himself. The messenger gives this news to Eurydice, the queen and Haemon’s mother, and Eurydice kills herself, stabbing herself in the chest at the palace altar and blaming Creon with her last breath. Creon, now grieving the loss of his family, sees the error of his ways and bemoans his tyranny and folly.

Themes in Antigone ¤ The Will of Gods(Antigone) vs the Law of the State(Creon). ¤ Respect for Death. ¤ Gender Roles

The Will of Gods(Antigone) vs the Law of the State(Creon) § § § Antigone defends the will of the gods, emphasizing the bond that she has to her family more than that which she has toward the state. Creon defends the need for law and order in a community, viewing civil law as more important than the will of the individual. Antigone was right and that Creon was wrong. Yet the justice of Antigone’s cause is not sufficient to save her. Her destruction follows inevitably from her unswerving devotion to the cause in which she believes.

Respect for Death § § Leaving Polyneices unburied is a punishment intended to harm him beyond the grave, ensuring that he will never be able to reach the afterlife in peace, and this disturbs the way in which death is naturally organized in ancient Greek society and religion. This injustice, not death itself, is the crime that Antigone is willing to die herself to rectify. Creon, on the other hand, disrespects death by attempting to usurp its power for his own. His punishment ultimately involves all of his loved ones coming together in death, leaving him alone and miserable.

Gender Roles § § § Even despite her lack of political power, Antigone’s ferocity of will proves more effective than that of the king himself. Indeed, Antigone effects change and causes Polyneices to be buried. She rises up in the hearts and minds of Thebes as a pious heroine. Among Creon’s character traits is also a recurring misogyny, a hatred for women. He consistently blames those he opposes for being womanlike and asserts that women are forces of anarchy (line 751). The irony of this sentimentis that the audience knows that Creon is the one who is being anarchistic and irrational—the very things he believes make women hateful—and that yielding to the will of women is precisely what he will eventually do.

Key Passages from Antigone 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Antigone vs Ismene Creon’s idea on the conflict of national interests and personal relationships Chorus’s “Ode to Man” Antigone’s Defiance Creon’s stubborn argument of the inevitability of his punishment and Haeman’s Defiance Heated Bantering between Creon and Haemon Teiresias’s Warning Creon’s Regret

1. Antigone vs Ismene Antigone: I would not urge you now; nor if you wanted to act would I be glad to have you with me. Be as you choose to be; but for myself I myself will bury him. It will be good to die, so doing. I shall lie by his side, loving hims as he loved me; I shall be a criminal —but a religious one. The time in which I must please those that are dead is longer than I must please those of this world. For there I shall lie forever. You, if you like, can cast dishonor on what the gods have honored. Ismene: I will not put dishonor on them, but to act in defiance of the citizenry, my nature does not give me means for that(ll 79 -92).

2. Creon’s idea on the conflict of national interests and personal relationships Creon: and anyone thinking another man more a friend than his own country, I rate him nowhere. For my part, God is my witness, who sees all, always, I would not count any enemy of my country as a friend—because of what I know, that she it is which gives us our security. If she sails upright and we sail on her, friends will be ours for the making. In the light of rules like this, I will make her greater still(200 -210).

3. Chorus’s “Ode to Man” Chorus: Many are the wonders, none is more wonderful than what is man. . A cunning fellow is man. His contrivances make him master of beasts of the field and those that move in the mountains. . . He has a way against everything, and he faces nothing that is to come without contrivances. Only against death can he call on no means of escape; but escape from hopeless diseases he has found in the depths of his mind. With some sort of cunning, inventive beyond all expectation he reaches sometimes evil, and some times good. . . If he honors the laws of earth, and the justice of the gods he has confirmed by oath, high is his city; no city has he with whom dwells dishonor prompted by recklessness. He who is so, may he never share my hearth(368 -411)!

4. Antigone’s Defiance Creon: And did you are to disobey that law? Antigone: Yes, it was not Zeus that made the proclamation; nor did Justice, which lives with those below, enact such laws as that, for mankind. I did not believe your proclamation had such power to enable one who will someday die to override God’s ordinances, unwritten and secure. They are not of today and yesterday; they live forever; none knows when first they were. These are the laws whose penalties I would not incure from the gods, through fear of any man’s temper. I know that I will die— of course I do—even if you had not doomed me by proclamation. If I shall die before my time, I count that a profit. How can such as I, that live among such troubles, not find a profit in death? So for such as me, to face such a fate as this is pain that does not count. But if I dared to leave the dead man, my mother’s son, dead and unburied, that would have been real pain. The other is not. Now, if you think me a fool to act like this, perhaps it is a fool that judges so(485 -514).

5. Creon’s stubborn argument of the inevitability of his punishment Creon: Do not, my son, banish your good sense through pleasure in a woman, since you know that the embrace grows cold when an evil woman shares your bed and home. What greater wound can there be than a false friend? No. Spit on her, throw her out like an enemy, this girl, to marry someone in Death’s house. I caught her openly in disobedience alone out of all this city and I shall not make myself a liar in the city’s sight. No, I will kill her. So let her cry if she will on the Zeus of kinship; . . . The man the city sets up in authority must be obeyed in samll things and in just but also in their opposites. . . There is nothing worse than disobedience to authority. It destroys cities, it demolishes homes; it breaks and outs one’s allies. Of successful lives the most of them are saved by discipline. So we must stand on the side of what is orderly; we cannot give victory to a woman. If we must accept defeat, let it be from man; we must not let people say that a woman beat us(699 -731).

5 -1. Haeman’s Defiance Haemon: . . . Your face is terrible to a simple citizen; it frightens him from words you dislike to hear. But what I can hear, in the dark, are things like these; the city mourns for this girl; they think she is dying most wrongly and most undeservedly of all womenkind, for the most glorious acts. . . Do not bear this single habit of mind, to think that what you say and nothing else is true. A man who thinks that he alone is right, or what he says, or what he is himself, unique, such men, when opened up, are seen to be quite empty. For a man, though he be wise, it is no shame to learn—learn many things, and not maintain his views too rigidly(741 -64).

6. Heated Bantering between Creon and Haemon Creon: Must I rule the land by someone else’s judgement rather than my own? Haemon: There is no city possessed by one man only. Creon: Is not the city thought to be the ruler’s? Haemon: You would be a fine dictator of a desert. Creon: It seems this boy is on the woman’s side. Haemon: If you are a woman—my care is all for you. Creon: You villain, to bandy words with your own father! Haemon: I see your acts as mistaken and unjust. Creon: Am I mistaken, reverencing my own office? Haemon: There is no reverence in trampling on God’s honor. Creon: Your nature is vile, in yielding to a woman.

6 -1. Heated Bantering between Creon and Haemon: You will not find me yield to what is shameful. Creon: At least, your argument is all for her. Haemon: Yes, and for you and me—and for the gods below. Creon: You will never marry her while her life lasts. Haemon: Than she mus die—and dying destroy another. Creon: Has your daring gone so far, to threaten me? Haemon: What threat is it to speak against empty judgments? Creon: Empty of sense yourself, you will regret your schooling of me in sense. Haemon: If your were not my father, I would say you are insane. Creon: You woman’s slave, do not try to wheedle me. Haemon: You want to talk but never to hear and listen. Creon: Is that so? By the heavens above you will not—be sure of that—get off scot-free, insulting and abusing me(793 -818).

7. Teiresias’s Warning Teiresias: And you must realize that you will not outlive many cycles more of this swift sun before you give in exchange one of your own loins bred, a corpse for a corpse, for you have thrust one that belongs above below the earth, and bitterly dishonored a living soul by lodging her in the grave; . . . These acts of yours are violence, on your part. And in requital the avenging Spirits of Death itself and the gods’ Furies shall after your dees, like in ambush for you, and in their hands you shall be taken cruelly(1122 -1138).

8. Creon’s Regret Creon: The mistakes of a blinded man are themselves rigid and laden with death. You look at us the killer and the killed of the one blood. Oh, the awful blindness of those plans of mine. My sone, you were so young, so young to die. You were freed from the bonds of life through no folly of your own—only through mine. Chorus: I think you have learned justice—but too late(1329 -36).