Antigone
Plot summary
Creon has issued a degree prohibiting anyone from burying Polyneices, since he is a traitor to Thebes. We meet Antigone speaking with Ismene about wanting to bury their brother. Ismene takes the side of obeying the law and doing what’s right by their family, while Antigone asserts that she has to bury their brother.
The chorus is introduced as Thebian elders, who are giving thanks to Apollo for their victory in battle and tell of how Eteocles fought Polyneices. A guard comes to King Creon and says that someone has disobeyed his order and has buried Polyneices. The perpetrator wasn’t seen but Creon sends the guard back to find who did it, under the threat of death.
Antigone is caught and fully admits responsibility for the crime, arguing about the morality of why she did it and that Polyneice’s actions in life shouldn’t be reflected in his burial. Ismene is arrested by confessing to Creon that she also helped in Polyneice’s burial. Antigone denies this and is furious that Ismene would only help with words and not actions. They are both locked up.
Creon’s son and also Antigone’s finance, Haemon, enters. He swears his loyalty to his father but also suggests that he should reconsider imprisoning Antigone as he thinks she didn’t do anything wrong. This meeting ends in an argument and Haemon leaves furious by his father’s actions.
Creon declares that while Ismene will be spared, Antigone will starve to death inside a sealed off cave. The chorus is upset about Creon’s decision.
Theiresias enters, a blind prophet. He says to Creon that he is making a huge mistake, the Gods do not approve of this decision and neither does the populace. The Chorus advise Creon to take Theiresias seriously as he has never been wrong before.
Creon finally agrees with Theiresias and the Chorus and leaves to go and free Antigone and give Polyneices a proper burial. While he is gone a messenger appears announcing to the Chorus that both Antigone and Haemon are dead.
Eurydice, Creon’s wife, enters and asks the messenger to repeat what was said and runs into the palace.
Creon returns with Haemon’s body, admitting that his actions caused this tragedy. Another messenger appears and informs Creon that Eurydice has also taken her own life. Before she did so she cursed Creon for having taken away her only son.
Creon stands before the chorus a broken man, who now blames himself for everything that has transpired. He asks the chorus to help him inside as he is too stunned to move. The Chorus announce that although gods punish the proud, punishment brings wisdom.
Analysis
Themes of the play:
Family vs. State Law – Antigone and Creon represent family and the state respectively. They always uphold their ideals to the bitter end, often going to extreme ends to do so. Antigone, believing her family is still suffering from a curse, ignores state law in order to preserve what dignity is left in her family, “Is there, of all the ills of Oedipus, one left that Zeus will fail to bring on us, while still we live?” Creon negates his own family, Haemon’s wishes to free his finance, to upload what he believes is right by the will of the Gods and the state.
Power and pride – This is a constant theme that occurs all throughout the play and what the Chorus summarises in the last few lines. Creon rules over Thebes with passionate self belief, “and hard it is to learn what each man is, in heart and mind and judgement, till one gains experience in the exercise of power.” Antigone on the other hand is also proud, refusing to back down from her position. Pride contributes to both Antigone and Creon’s downfall.
The role of women in a male dominated world – From the very beginning of the play the exchange between Ismene and Antigone reflects this theme. Ismene says to Antigone that because they are women it is impossible to change the law and the order of what Creon has decreed, “For this we need remember, we were born women; as such, not made to strive with men.” Ismene serves as Antigone’s foil, constantly addressing the power that men have over women. When Creon learns that he should free Antigone and bury Polyneices he argues that even if he were wrong he could never admit defeat to a woman.
The plot follows a linear structure and chronological structure, with no flashbacks or flash forwards of any kind
Features a continuous narrative
Cause and effect logic
The exposition is delivered by the Chorus in a song, describing the battle that took the lives of Polyneices and Eteocles. Other songs include a song about man triumphing over nature in the ‘Ode to man,’ and about love.
‘Antigone’ features both internal conflict and external conflict. Many of the characters, such as Antigone, Ismene and Creon are faced with internal conflicts, choosing what the right thing to do is. External conflicts are pressures from societal norms, history of the family and the gods.
Round characters
Freytag Pyramid
Exposition – Chorus fills us in about the situation in Thebes and the battle between Polyneices, Eteocles and how the state was left by Oedipus
Inciting Moment – Antigone and Ismene argue about the burial of their brother, Polyneices
Rising Action – Creon establishes that no one should bury Polyneices under the threat of death. Antigone buries the body
Complication – Antigone is captured by the guards
Climax – Creon orders Antigone to death
Reversal – Tiresias and the chorus give warnings to Creon about changing his decision, free Antigone and bury Polyneices
Falling Action – Messenger informs Creon that both Antigone and Haemon are dead
Catastrophe – Creon hears that his wife, Eurydice has killed herself
Moment of last suspense – Creon admits his wrong doings and the Chorus emphasise the message of the play
Tragic hero
Points can be made for who is the tragic hero of the play, either Antigone or Creon.
Creon starts at the beginning with everything and ends with nothing. Pride was his fatal flaw, refusing to admit he was wrong, “and who, then, else but me should rule this land.” His tragedy is that he ultimately learns his wisdom at the end of the play and is unable to save himself from his own errors. As Bernard J. Paris states in his book ‘Imagined Human Beings: A Psychological Approach to Character and Conflict in Literature’: “Creon’s behaviour throughout the play is that of an emotionally unstable man who fears external opposition and internal weakness. In his desperate need to assure himself and others of his potency, he reacts defensively in every situation and makes a series of terrible mistakes… Antigone’s story has a tragic vindication pattern in which even Creon comes to recognise that she was right, but too late to prevent her destruction.”
Antigone on the other hand can also be considered the tragic hero of the play. Like Creon, her flaw can also considered to be pride, she is too certain that she is constantly right. She defies man made law, insisting that she believes in divine law above anything else. This stubbornness is explained by Annie Pritchard, “She never mentions her husband to be Haemon; she is cruel to the point of sadism to Ismene, who shows genuine distress and love for her stubborn, doomed sister.” Her reversal of fortune occurs because of her defiance of Creon, who sentences her to death. Ultimately her fate is not deserved. She journeys from the beginning of the play, being a member of a royal family and ends up locked away in a cave to die.
Sophocles Biography
Born 496 BCE in Colonus, a village a mile northwest of Athens
His father was a wealthy manufacturer of armour and because of this, Sophocles received a good education
At the age of 16, because of his good looks and physique, he was asked to lead a choral chant to the gods celebrating the Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis
After this he began competing in the City of Dionysia, a festival held to present new plays at the Theatre of Dionysia
In his first competition Sophocles took out first prize, beating Aeschylus
Senior administrator in the Athenian Empire and elected to become one of the ten generals in charge of the military.
Out of the 120+ plays written by Sophocles, only 7 have survived in their entirety
He contributed a lot to advancements in drama:
He added an extra actor to a scene, increasing the number of speaking parts in a play from two to three
Expanded the number of Chorus members from 12 to 15
He invented the scene painting, adding to the world building of a play
He wrote Antigone in 441 BC
Critical reactions to the play
“Between 1790 and 1905 it was widely held by European poets, philosophers, scholars that Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’ was not only the finest of Greek tragedies but a work of art nearer to perfection than any other produced by the human spirit.” – George Steiner – Another Antigone The emergence of the female political actor in Euripides Phonesia
Critical reactions to the play changed drastically in the 1960’s-70’s with the rise of feminism, particularly people’s views of Antigone, now becoming an anti-authoritarian social feminist.
Antigone’s choice to defend her family’s honour over an oppressive government was something that feminists applauded and challenged the position of women, “…provided unknown modern thinkers with an opportunity to reflect upon the place of women with respect to both state and the household.”
Some feminist interpreters, like Annie Pritchard, claim that Antigone’s suicide takes place in a “womb-like prison,” and “kills herself by hanging herself with her veils, the symbol of her socially ascribed position as a woman.”
“In the last few years, Antigone has enjoyed a new prominence on stage… a fact attributable to contemporary political conditions.” – Keri Walsh, ‘Antigone Now’
“While political contexts and intellectual preoccupations shift, the power of Antigone as spectacle remains. She is, at once, a canon of ideas and a protagonist in plays that continue to be popular, urgent, and moving.” – Antigone Now
Significant performances and adaptations
1841 – Opera version of the play. Felix Mendelssohn composed an opera for Ludwig Tick’s staging of the play. It featured an overture and seven choruses and was very well received
1944 – A version of ‘Antigone’ written by Jean Anouilh, was staged in Paris in February 1944 during Nazi occupation of France, the play becoming a symbol for the underground resistance. “Ironically, many Nazi’s also embraced ‘Antigone,’ primarily because of the classical source. While German censors suppressed any new works that even hinted of anti-fascism, ‘Antigone’ slipped by as a relatively safe retelling of an ancient tale.”
1948 – Bertolt Brecht re-contextualised the play to be about the Holocaust. Creon’s advisors address him as ‘mein fuhrer,’ and at the very end of the play Creon says that he would rather see the city destroyed than surrender, very similar to Hitler. He included a poem in the programme notes to the play:
“Come out of the twilight
And walk before us a while,
Friendly, with the light step
Of one whose mind is fully made up, terrible
To the terrible.
You who turn away, I know
How you feared death, but
Still more you fear
Unworthy life.
And you let the powerful get away
with nothing, and did not reconcile yourself
With the obfuscators, nor did you ever
Forget affront, and let the dust settle
On their misdeeds.
I salute you!”
Classicist Bernard Knox says that Brecht addressed the poem to the idea of Antigone, “… the image of what Brecht longed to see – the rising of the German people against Hitler, a resistance that in fact never came to birth.”
2004 – Popular Irish playwright Seamus Heaney translated Antigone and renamed it ‘The Burial at Thebes,’ which included a note by Heaney comparing Creon with the foreign policies of the Bush administration
Notable actors/directors involved in productions
One of the only movie versions of the play is the 1961 Greek film by Yorgos Tzavellas, starring Irene Papas as Antigone and Manos Katrakis as Creon. The end of the film is different from the play, Creon steps down as King of Thebes and exiles himself
Juliette Binoche in 2015 played the role of ‘Antigone’ and spoke to NPR about playing the role: “Antigone, my character in the play, is burying her brother, who's a criminal, as well. And nobody wants to bury him. But Antigone, his sister, wants to bury him. And so I thought, OK, this is the case of the jihadists, you know, who – nobody wants to bury them, and yet they're being buried. I know me, Juliette, I would bury anybody. If you're a human being, no matter what you've done, you have to bury your people. That's the law that is beyond, for me, questions. It's part of what we do. We have to bury our people. It says in "Oedipus At Colonus" that if you don't bury somebody, their soul will wander around for the – until the eternity – the end of the eternity, which is never. And so, for me, probably 'cause I'm a mother and there's something about giving birth, you give the body the chance to live. You have to take care of it until the end. It's – there's no question to me. The moral judgment, you know, the good and bad is somehow on another level.”
In 2012, ‘Antigone’ was performed at the National Theatre in London, Jodie Whittaker (now the current Doctor Who) as Antigone and Christopher Eccleston (a past Doctor Who) as Creon
Most recently there was a 2018 production here in New York, starring Alexandra King as Antigone and Ty Jones as Creon, the play re-contextualised the play to be set in current day America with a focus on the black lives matter movement.
Bibliography –
Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by Edward Hayes, Digireads , 2016.
Pritchard, Annie. “Antigone's Mirrors: Reflections on Moral Madness.” Hypatia, vol. 7, no. 3, 1992.
Paris, Bernard J. Imagined Human Beings: A Psychological Approach to Character and Conflict in Literature. NYU Press, 1997.
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. “Another Antigone: The Emergence of the Female Political Actor in Euripides' ‘Phoenician Women.’” Political Theory, vol. 33, no. 4, Aug. 2005.
Holland, Catherine A. “After Antigone: Women, the Past, and the Future of Feminist Political Thought.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 42, no. 4, Oct. 1998.
Walsh, Keri. “Antigone Now.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 41, no. 3, Sept. 2008.
Smith, Mark Chalon. “The Agony of 'Antigone' : Anouilh's Heroine Symbolized Nazi Resistance, Its Validity Holds, Says ART's Cotter.” Los Angeles Times, 25 Sept. 1992.
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht Collected Plays 8. Edited by Tom Kuhn, Bloomsbury, 2005.
Sophocles. The Three Thebian Plays. Edited by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1984.
Gross, Terry. “From Ingenue To Antigone: Juliette Binoche Discusses Acting, Aging And Family.” NPR, NPR, 28 Sept. 2015, www.npr.org/2015/09/28/443484430/from-ingenue-to-antigone-juliette-binoche-discusses-acting-aging-and-family.
Woodard, Thomas M., and Oliver Taplin. “Sophocles.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 26 Sept. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/Sophocles.
Freytag pyramid – https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/freytag.html