Antigone's Moral Decision in Sophocles' Antigone

This study will examine the moral decision of Antigone, in Sophocles' play Antigone, to bury her dead brother against the legal decree of Creon, the King of Thebes. Antigone grants that her brother Polyneices has indeed broken the law by trying to take over Thebes (the reason that Creon wants to disallow his burial), but Antigone argues that there is a higher law than the legal code, a higher law which is based on the sacred tie of blood relations. She argues that the gods support her in her effort to bury her brother. The decision may cost her her life, but she is determined to do everything she can to follow and abide by what she sees as a higher moral calling. After an examination of the decision itself, this study will apply the ethical theories of Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham to that decision.

Creon and Antigone could not stand in more stark contrast to one another in terms of the qualities important to each. Creon may have the civic law on his side, and he may argue from that basis, at least on the surface, but the play shows that his major concerns are pride and revenge, not following the law. Antigone, on the other hand, cares only about doing what is right according to the highest standards of humanity and of the gods. She wants to bury her brother as much as Creon wants to prevent his burial. A powerful clue to the essential stands of each character is that Antigone determinedly maintains her ethical stand to the end, while Creon changes his mind and buries Po

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urying the body, against even covering it with dust, and she responds that she had heard the decree, but that she "dared defy" it because It was not God's proclamation. That final justice/ That rules the world below makes no such laws. Your edict, King, was strong,/ But all your strength is weakness against/ The immortal unrecorded laws of God./ There are not merely now: they were, and shall be,/ Operative for ever, beyond man utterly. . . . This death of mine/ Is of no importance; but if I had left my brother/ Lying in death unburied, I should have suffered./ Now I do not (Sophocles 423). Creon shows his pettiness once again in response, seeing the conflict in terms of who will be seen as "the man here/ She or I, if this crime goes unpunished?" (Sophocles 424). Clearly, he cares little about the State, and much about the public image of his own manhood. Creon is acting not out of any moral calling, but only from pride and vengeance. When he is confronted with the fact that if he puts Antigone to death he will be slaying his son's wife-to-be, Creon coldly and crudely responds, "There are places enough for him to push his plow" (Sophocles 426). Throughout the play Creon shows an immaturity befitting a sullen, selfish, petty s

Category: Literature - A