ANTIGONE by Sophocles

ANTIGONE  (by Sophocles, Transl. Paul Woodruff, Hackett, 2001)

This play by Sophocles contains 2 strong characters: Antigone and her uncle Creon, former regent and now ruler of Thebes. 

Synopsis

Just prior to the start of the play, Thebes had just successfully fought off an attack by Antigone’s brother Polyneices and the Argive navy.  Polyneices and his brother Eteocles quarreled after their father‘s (Oedipus’) death, over who would rule Thebes.  Eteocles threw his support behind allowing Creon (their uncle) to continue as ruler.  Polyneices, who married a princess of Argos, raised the Argive fleet against Thebes.  Both brothers ended up killing each other during the battle.  Creon decrees that Eteocles will have a hero’s burial with all honours.  He also decreed that Polyneices’s body should be left unburied, for the dogs and vultures to scavenge, because this nephew had betrayed Thebes. 

In the first sections of ANTIGONE, Creon seems a thoughtful but severe ruler.  He has strong feelings about ruling and leadership, about honesty and integrity but foremost he seems concerned about the health and survival of Thebes.

I will never call a man my friend

If he is hostile to this land.  I know this well:

The city is our lifeboat: we have no friends at all

Unless we keep her sailing right side up.

Such are my laws. By them I’ll raise this city high.

Antigone is similarly a person of strong principles - and she will stand by them no matter the cost.  She tries to convince her sister Ismene to stand with her in defying Creon and burying their brother Polyneices.  When Ismene is fearful and reluctant, Antigone immediately lets her off the hook but not without condemning her lack of resolve and bravery:

Go on and BE the way you choose to be. I

Will bury him.  I will have a noble death

[…]

You, keep to your choice:

Go on insulting what the gods hold dear.

Both Antigone and Creon are proud of the “character of their mind” (as Creon congratulates himself); the aspect in each of them which most strongly combines the passionate and the rational.  Their passion makes them strong, severe and inflexible.  Their ‘reason’ allows them to set out an ethical framework to justify their actions and to close their minds to other perspectives.  By the end of the play, both Creon and Antigone have suffered and lost everything because of the ‘character of their minds’ and their unwillingness to waver from their positions.  Antigone has died for her passion and Creon has lost everything he values because of holding to his severe reasoning.

Again I like the Chorus in this play.  A council of elders (male elders of course) they offer a wise and balanced viewpoint, maybe they are too tired for passion?  They offer a descriptive summary of mankind’s place in the world:

Many wonders, many terrors

But none more wonderful than the human race

Or more dangerous.

This creature travels on a winter gale

Across the silver sea,

Shadowed by high-surging waves,

While on Earth, grandest of the gods,

He grinds the deathless, tireless land away,

Turning and turning the plow

From year to year, behind the driven horses.

Light-headed birds he catches

And takes them away in legions.  Wild beasts

Also fall prey to him.

And all that is born to live beneath the sea

Is thrashing in his woven nets.

For he is Man, and he is cunning.

He has invented ways to take control

Of beasts that range the mountain meadows:

Taken down the shaggy-necked horses,

The tireless mountain bulls,

And put them under the yoke.

Language and a mind swift as the wind

For making plans –

And the character to live in cities under law.

He’s learned to take cover from a frost

And escape sharp arrows of sleet.

He has the means to handle every need,

Never steps toward the future without the means.

Except for Death: He’s got himself no relief from that,

Though he puts his mind to seeking cures

For plagues that are hopeless.

This antistrophe a (second stanza above) reminds me of Genesis

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/genesis-rsv.asp

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

I’m not sure, over two thousand years later, that humankind has come to any clearer perspective on our place in the universe.  What the thinkers were grappling with millennia ago, we still have not solved today.  We do have thinkers that grasp that mankind does NOT have “dominion…over all the earth” but their words of wisdom are ignored and buried deep by those in power and by monetary interests.

Creon, though he would have considered that man has dominion over everything on earth (everything that was not the gods’) did have a clear understanding of the perils of money:

Money is the nastiest weed ever to sprout

In human soil.  Money will ravage a city,

Tear men from their homes and send them into exile.

Money teaches good minds to go bad;

It is the source of every shameful human deed.

Money points the way to wickedness,

Lets people know the full rage of irreverence.

…

In the end, Antigone is dead, having held true to her severe ethics.  Creon has allowed his mind to open up and admit other viewpoints, make room for compassion and tolerance, but too late.  He loses his only son, his wife and his honour.  There are many good lines in the play about the danger of a closed mind – most of these uttered by Haemon (Creon's son and affianced to Antigone).  I didn’t expect to like him but his speeches to his father were very clever.  He manages to speak against his father’s positions and to bring a different perspective but does so without fatally alienating the king.  Haemon seems to have the better balance of passion and reason.  He loves Antigone and he has a passion for justice but he can use reason to try and accomplish his goals. 

Haemon:

And now, don’t always cling to the same anger,

Don’t keep saying this, and nothing else is right.

If a man believes that he alone has a sound mind,

And no one else can speak or think as well as he does,

Then, when people study him, they’ll find an empty book.

But a wise man can learn a lot and never be ashamed…

Between Haemon’s words and the prophecy of Tiresias (the soothsayer), Creon eventually changes his mind and realizes he was wrong to deny a proper burial to Polyneices and wrong to condemn Antigone to death for trying to honour her brother.

It has been fascinating to read these last 3 Greek plays (Medea, Lysistrata, Antigone) with their strong female characters.  Of the 3, Lysistrata is most admirable.  Like Haemon, she combines passion and reason in a good balance.