Antigone Page
Characters:
Antigone: Daughter of
Oedipus, niece of Creon, fiance of Haemon,, sister of
Etercles and Polynices.
Ismene: Sister of Antigone
Creon: Ruler of Thebes.
Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices, and Ismene’s uncle. Father of
Haemon.
Haemon: Creon’s sun, bethrothed
to Antigone.
Teiresias: A seer or prophet,
blind.
Eurydice: Creon’s wife
Haemon’s mother.
Chorus
Antigone
What is Antigone committed to?
Kinship-
(philos-beloved or dear)
Greek Word: philia:
love or friendship, which involves a general requirement of reciprocal
help.
Involves the desire to
help our friends and protect them from hospitality.
The word philia
goes beyond personal frienships to cover a while web of political, business,
and family relationships.
Most fundamental is the
family.
Between family members
there should be a bond of natural affection which arises from blood ties
and common interests.
The strongest form of
natural affection was parental love.
Respect for parents was
one of the strongest obligations in Greek society.
It could be considered
disgraceful even to contradict one’s father.
Children were obligated
to support their parents in old age.
A special bond also existed
between brothers and siblings, based on their common origins and upbringing.
But philia extends
beyond the immediate family to all those related by blood or marriage.
After the family, the
second main circle of philoi or freiends, dear ones, consists of
fellow citizens, with whom one is presumed to share common iterests.
Polis- Greek city
state, was the context in which this political friendship existed.
The worst thing about
being exiled was the lack of dear ones.
No such thing as a human
life lived outside the community of friends.
In Sophocles time, 5th
century B.C., the idea of love of country also developed out of these more
specific loyalties- the fatherland is to be cherished like a real father.
Creon.
What about Creon?
To whom is he committed?
Love of city and its laws.
So we have a conflict
between 2 types of philia, Antigone’s committment to kinship philia
and Creon’s committment to the affairs of the city.
Why is there even a question
about whether Polynices should be buried?
Lets see how these 2 opposing
views develop, by turning to the opening scenes:
Antigone's first words
suggest a commitment to kinship-
She opens the play with an intimate address to her sister and suggests
that enemies are plotting harm against them.
Eteocles: will receive burial with justice and law demand.
Polynices: must be left
unmorned, without a grave, a happy hunting ground for birds to peck for
tidbits.
Antigone is determined
to defy Creon’s decree. She reproaches Ismeme by emphasizing their
shared kinship with the dead man.
“He is my brother. I will bury him. What Creon says is
irrevelant.”
She is confident she will be reunited with Polynices after death. P.161
Does Antigone show a warm
personal love for her dead brother?
She doesn’t share any
memories of him or lament him.
Yet we get a general impression
of devotion to him.
A long speech of mouring
would shift attentionaway from the central fact that its not some personal
feeling for Polynices that mekes her take this position-
She is dedicated to all
her dead family members by a bond of philia that should unite them.
Prologue en do with Ismene’s conclusion that Antigone is silly or senseless,
but loyal and rightly so.
The justice of the gods
requires that Polynices be given the honor of burial as well as Etocles.
Who requires this? The justice of the gods and their unwritten,
divine and infalliable laws.
So besides family loyalty, Antigone’s principle motivation is prudent
respect for the gods.
What is strange about
Antigone’s words?
If we listen to only her,
would we even know that a war had taken place or that anything called “city”
was in danger?
Notice how she draws her
lines- acctually she draws a circle.
What is inside her family:
loved ones and friends what is outside is non-family ad therefore in any
conflict with the family, an enemy.
How does Antigone treat
her sister, Ismeme?
They ought to be close
but from the outset Ismene is treated with remote coldness.
When Ismene tries to talk
Antigone out of burying Polynices, Antigone says,
“If that is your life,
you have earned my hatred and that of our dead brother.”
If you take the wrong
stand on matters of pious obligation, you become an enemy.
Ismene’s initial failure
to act opens up an unbridgeable gap between loved one and enemy and although
Ismene later tries to share her sufferings by taking part of the blame
for burying Polynices, it is too late.
Rather strange? Antigone shows unswerving devotion to a brother and
who made war on his own brother and their nature city, but when it comes
to her sister, whose disloyalty was on a much smaller scale, she rejects
her as an enemy.
Ismene has a lot more
feeling than Antigone.
Supreme law and passion
for Antigone: duty to the dead.
She structures her entire life and vision of the world in terms of this
simple, self-contained system of duties.
She refuses to see a conflict in that duty.
For Instance:
Polynices killed her older
brother, Eteocles. Hasn’t he betrayed the sacred bond of kinship
in doing so? Wouldn’t kinship demand that she reject a brother who
attacked not only his own city but his family and ended up killing his
own brother? There is then a conflict in her obligation to family.
But is a conflict Antigone refuses to see. How does she escape this
conflict? She recognizes honor and justice into a simple formula-
Do anything to please the death where she will be a permanent companion
to the dead.
If this makes sense to sacrifice short term ties to the living in order
to avoid alienating one’s future companions.
So her piety is self-serving.
Underlying incoherence
in Antigone’s devotion to family.
If she were truly virtuous she could see the possibility of conflict.
More than this she gets
around the conflict that arises in ther family obligations due to Polynices
killing of Eteocles by believing that enmity-hate, doesn’t exist beyond
the grave.
She says that if Etocles
were alive, he would back her up in her plea to have Polynices burried.
Creon questions this belief,
but only the dead know for sure and they can’t speak.
She forgives Polynices
in death the crimes against the family he commits in life, and she expects
Etocles to do likewise.
But if she can forgive Polynices and he and Etocles one another, wouldn’t
they forgive Antigone for omitting burrial under such extremem threats
by Creon?
Her single-minded persuit of family is incorrect- she goes to extremes
to avoid taking sides between her brothers.
“I’ll join anyone in loving, not in hating.” pg176.
II. Antigone
Polynices
Creon: gulf between Oreon
and Antigone is dramatized in the play by dividing the audiences introduction
to them with a parodox the first choral song of the chorus. The chorus
describes the defeat of polynices and his army in their assault on Thebes.
They say that the attack is defeated by Zeus himself. They rejoice
at the cities salvation.
Does the chorus
pass any judgement on the brother’s quarrel? Do they ask us to admire
Etescles and hate Polynices? No they emphasize the mutual character
of the hatred between the two brothers (p 164) It is only after Oreon
portrayed Eteocks as a hero and Polynics as a villian that the chorus echoes
his sentiments and say they undertand his taking that point of view.
So the political
sympathies of the chorus are unclear at this point. As far as they
are concerned, “we should forget the war” (p 164) Their Ode is thus
a neutral interkude between the antithetical views of Antigora and Oreon.
As Anti first words
stressed family ties, Creon begins with “ the affairs of the city”, he
is the new king and has called a council of elders. He begins by
thanking teh gods for teh victory. Then he says that while th ethrone
has come to him by inheritance, it remains to be seen whether he’ll be
a worthy ruler until he exercises the power h’s got. So far, he doesn’t
sound like a tryant.
Then he sets forth
the principles upon which he will base his rule.
1) He condemns any
ruler who allows fear to deter him from enacting good measures what would
a ruler have to fear that might deter him from implementing things?
Unpopularity? Insurrection? Evidently he doesn’t trust the citizens
to recognize and approve his best plans he says that all other loyalties
must be subject to our countries interest this sugests that any other grievance
will be viewed as illegitimate. In a ruler, the courage to risk unpopular
measures must be balanced but a respect for legitimate grievances.
Creon doesn’t understand this. He too is rigid.
The
audience viewing this play would have teh view that no values, country,
family, piety, friendship, are conflict free. The justice of teh
city can conflict with the justice of the world below. Piety to one
God may entail oftending another God. The spectators would have seen
Creon’s situation as a conflict between major values. Creon is teh
closest male family member to Polynics, so he has a deep religious obligation
to bury the corpse.
And yet Polynics
has an enemy of the city- a traitor burial withi the city limits was strictly
forbidden. The city would deposit teh corpse unburied outside of
teh city limits- to do more would subvert civic values by honoring treachery.
As king of teh city Creon must take care not to honor Polynices corpse,
but he would not be expected to go to teh extreme of preventing or forbidding
a burial of the city. But what does he do? He forbides burial
at all extreme.
The audience would
also percieve Cron as being under a strong obligation to promote or arrange
for burial. What they would expect to find in Creon is a tension
between his 2 roles, at family member and king, and their 2 requirements.
What would they
see instead, to their surprise?
What they would see is
the complete absence of tension or conflict. Creon achieves this,
like Antigone, by rearranging ordinary values so that they apply only to
the well being of the city, which for him is the single intrinsic good.
Good and bad become for Creon just those people and things that are good
for the city. His one example of a bad woman is Antigone. Her
badness is civic badness. The worst man is me who withholds the exercise
of his powers from the city out of fear or self interests. “Nor can
I be a friend to my contry’s foes” pg. 165 line 190
Creon is attempting to
replace blood ties with the bonds of civic friendship. City- family
conflicts cannot arise if our city is our family, if our family is the
city. So on this view, Polynices stands in no relation to Creon,
except the relation of enmity. “Your enemy doesn’t become your friend
by dying.” Pg 176, line 525
Pg. 181 “People who are
loyal members of their families will be good citizens too.”
Creon’s refusal to
accept any bonds other than the one he himself has chosen, even extends
to his view of sexual attraction. Hw calls Antigone a bad woman,
we know her badness is being unpatriotic. He tells Haemon not to
get carried away with his passion for her because an unpatriotic spouse
will be cold as she lies beside him. The man who sees the world correctly
will not be moved by a passion that might conflict with his civic duty.
Pg179… When Ismane
says, “so you would execute your own son’s bride.” Creon replies,
“Plenty of other women in the world.” Other furrows for his plough.
The Greek actually says, “There are other furrows for his plow.”
That was the language of the Athenian marriage contract. “I will
give you my daughter for the plowing of legitimate children. A good
man sees a wife merely as a fertile producer of citizens.
The final component of life
that Creon takes on and remakes according to his imagination of what types
of bonds are important: the gods. He thinks of them as conscientious
statesmen.
Interchange with chorus
who thinks the gods have brought about Polynices burial: pg186
How can you say God
cares about this corpse? Co you suppose God feels obligated to him
for coming to burn down his temples and his statues in defiance of his
laws? Ever notice God being kind to evil doers?
NO- The implication
here is given Creon’s anger that such a thought is unbearable. The
gods cannot have honored Polynices.
We begin to suspect now
that Creon’s reordering of priorities with civic duty on tope has made
itself god. At any rate, he’s made himself a world into which conflicts
cannot arise because there is only one supreme value.
Creon compares the city
to a ship which has passed through stormy weather. He is going to
steer it straight and make it great. This was a common image in Greek
politics of his time. Without her, citizens could do nothing.
As a ship, the city is a tool built by humans to subjugate chance and nature.
The city ship is water tight it provides a barrier against external dangers.
It removes vulnerability, chance from human life to the extent that it
is tightly built. (Remember Pindar). If the ship is going to
do this it must be the one standard to which all other values can be reduced.
Everything a person loves must be a function of the city.
Is Creon able to hold onto
his city ship strategy at the end of the play?
NO- The city is not
a machine but a complex whole made up of people- families and individuals
with all the messy and conflicting concerns that people have , including
their religious practices. A plan like Creon’s that makes the city
the supreme good cannot so easily as he does deny the value of religious
beliefs of the people who make up the city.
Pg 184 exchange between
Haemon and Creon.- If the city belongs to one person than it is no city.
Meaning no one in the
city shares Creon’s view of relationships- that all of them are civic.
Antigone is not the woman his son loves but a furrow for his plow.
Bond between husband and wife means producing of citizens. NO blood
ties, NO passionate love.
Does Creon even treat
Antigone in a human way? No. He sees her as an opponent but
as a matter that needs to be beaten into shape. PG174-75. The hardest
tempered steen will shatter at a blow. Metal- working, horse-taming,
Slave owning- Creon sees these as all the same and his dominance over Antigone
is like this too. In the life he wants there are useful objects,
no people who talk back. When it comes to punishing her he need not
only denies their relationship but openly repudiates it.
2.) Antigone
-In reordering his priorites,
creon has made civic duty into a new god.
- His use of the image
of a shipo to explain the city
-Can he hold on to his
city-ship image at the end of the play?
-Does Creon treat Antigone
in a human way?
-Inconsistencies in Creon’s
philia: civic duty
1.) He claims loyalty
to the polis as a criterion of philia but he sees al lcitizes as potential
enemies(1st speech, pg 6-7) and throughout the play the way in which he
rigidly demands obedience suggest that he fears insurrection. Pg 9- “Certain
hostile elements in the city, who resent my civic rule are in on this.”
In the interchange with
Haemon, we see that while he has claimed that the well being of the city
is his criteria for action, he really thinks of the city as his personal
possession. Pg.19”a nation in personified in its ruler.” Better
translation “But custom gives possession to the ruler.” Haemon “you’d
rule a desert beautifully alone.”
He is outraged when
Haemon suggests that he should change his mind and that all the people
of the city think so too. “must I ask their permission for everything?”
Thebes was supposed
to be a democracy- the people must approve of their rulers and their practical
decisions.
Creon has said that a
ruler must prove his worth in order to gain approval of the city- but his
treatment of Antigone violates not only her sense of justice but that of
Creon’s son and the whole city. His policies have not brought approval-
the guards are nervous and fearful of him, the citizens are afraid to voice
their opinions.
Antigone pg 13-
“Theses men are on my side, but they dare not say so.”
Haemon pg 18-“You’re
so held in awe that people dare not say things to your face.” Greek
“your presence frightens them.” He talks about the people’s “secret
opinion.” Finally, is the Chorus really supportive of Creon?
NO. They are lukewarm at best. What does this suggest?
*Creon is out of
touch with the members of the city he is supposed to rule.
2.) He was not granted
his power by the city. He inherited it by the chance occurrence of
his nephews’ death- through those family ties for which he shows no respect.
3.) Is Creon really upholding
the law? No. He’s going further, disallowing any burial of
Polynices. While law is what holds a city together and thus deserves
respect, when laws are created at the whim of a ruler they become tyrannical.
Again and again, the people refer to the decree as Creon’s pronouncement,
rather than the law of the land.
So Creon’s decree
is not an upholding of the laws of the city- it is one man’s law.
The laws of te
gods, on which Antigone lies are on the other hand the traditions sanctioned
by the polis. They are both human and divine- no conflict.
4.) Undermines his own
position about upholding the city’s laws in his treatment of Antigone,
the method of her punishment. Pg 17- “I must execute her.”
Antigone p3- “the penalty for disobedience is to be scared to death.”
What does Creon do with her? He entombs her alive with a little food.
Why? To avoid polluting the gods by executing her. P20-
“She’ll have enough food to avoid the curse.” So that the city will
not suffer. Why would Creon fear the wrath of the gods? Hasn’t
he portrayed them as being all along? He undercuts his claim to having
the support of the gods.
OR-
Perhaps he is honoring
kinship ties after all? Antigone is his niece. If so , then
the inconsistency in his position vs. his action is even greater.
As Antigone points out
pg 12, Creon’s decree goes beyond his own jurisdiction. He is interfacing
with the divine order of things. The dead belong to the underworld
and only a god can make laws with regard to their treatment. It is
for transgressing these limits- for violence against the gods and their
laws, that Creon must be crushed. Tiresias reiterates this point-pg
25.
Haemon
When he first appears
he is eminently tactful and reasonable- he emphasizes obedience and good
judgment in his opening words. His whole speech praises reason, tolerance
and the wisdom of learning from others.
He seems at least initially,
to have needed his fathers’ warning not to lose his wits out of sexual
desire.
When Creon rejects
Haemon, his response is that Antigone’s death won’t be the only one.
Bottom pg19 Transparent hint at suicide.
Chorus comments
on his angry exit- mental anguish is keenly felt by the young: Chorus’
anxiety is vindicated when we hear of Haemon’s passionate death.
Pg28. Silent glare,
with savage eyes. Spits on his father, tries to kill him, then turns
the sword on himself.
Despite Haemon’s claim
to value Creon’s advice over any marriage, his loyalties to father and
bride are as irreconcilable as the conflicting claims of duty to family
and duty to city.
Special tragedy- unlike
Antigone and Creon he has a full understanding of the value of both.
Concern for polis complemented but appreciation of personal and family
love. Creon has placed him in a dilemma like Antigone’s- only solution
is death.
Although Antigone is one
sided, her obsession is less destructive, more of a working for the city
than against itself.
She won’t acknowledge
the decree of Creon, but she never rejects the city as valuable.
Creon does reject the family as valuable.
What brings the
polis to doom? Creon’s scorn for family and for public opinion- and
for tradition, laws, boundaries of gods.
Unlike Creon, Antigone
is not alone in her views- the citizens share her views. She suggests
that she will receive glory and remembrance for burying Polynices- who
will give her glory if not the other citizens.
Creon can make no
such claim. When he loses Haemon’s loyalty he loses the lost shred
of his claim to represent the city. But (18) Haemon reports that
the citizens think that Antigone deserves special honor.
Even the chorus
(21) promise her glory for the manner of her death.
If Antigone is doing the
right thing, why does she feel so alone and isolated? She has cut
herself off from her sister. She has quarreled with the chorus.
Does she know what Haemon knows about the public’s opinion of her?
She seems to question whether the Gods are on her side. Pg 22.
As she goes to the death
she calls the city the chorus, “rich people of thebes” to bear witness
to her fate. Pg 23 top
Do you think she has learned
the limitations of her own principles at the end of the play or is she
castigating, chastising the chorus? She shows no signs of regret.
No insight into importance of obedience.
Why would she be
angry with the chorus? It has been apathetic. She seems
to imply that they have a special responsibility as “rich people of thebes”
as the council of aristocrats, and acts, “will you not judge between us?”-
will you not take a stand? Intimidated by Creon, the chorus has abandoned
her. She is the last of a royal line- the ruling family, to whom the chorus
are supposed to be loyal. Creon is only related to the ruling family
by marriage. She has not failed the citizens, since the burial was
both in their best interests and in fulfillment of established laws.
Creon admits this pg 26.
She accuses the
chorus of mockery- pg 21
Tiresais- enters at darkest
moment of the drama. Both he and boy are in company of someone they
can rely on, not solitary. From partnership, community, comes possibility
of action. 2 see from one.
Urges Creon to heal himself
from the rage for control. Good thinking is connected with yielding,
renouncing stubbornness and being flexible. Recalls Haemon’s advice.
Trees that bend…
Connection between learning
and yielding- giving due recognition to the complexities of the world.
This way is not
only safer more prudent, but richer and more beautiful. Richness
of value that IS the world. Creon’s singleness of view ends up being
uncivilized.
Tiresais’ way of life
has room for genuine community and cooperation. Only the person who
balances self protection with yielding can be a lover or a friend- must
be able to see otherness.
Razors edge of luck- balance
between control and vulneralbiltiy.
Follow convention- traditions
of community as good guide to what to be yielded to- preserve plurality
of values and teach reverence for gods.