d Haimon die.
The metaphor of marriage is carried through here for Antigone--she is said to be in her bridal chamber, and she is now the bride of Death. The irony here is that she is the bride of Haimon after all because he has joined her in death. This is clear to Creon as he approaches and hears the wail of his son from within the chamber. This entire story is told in graphic and dramatic terms by the Messenger, who makes the horror of the situation clear even as the playwright tempers that horror by having it played off-stage. The violence itself is kept from the audience, while the aftermath of that violence, the consequences of these acts, are presented on stage. It is the consequences that are most important and toward which the play has been tending from the beginning, leaving Creon a broken man who has brought about his own downfall.
The story told by the Messenger reminds the audience of the various ritual elements that have been in contention from the beginning, those rituals that are the requirements of the gods, that Antigone sought, and that Creon denied. The wedding and marriage metaphors are presented in a horrific manner in Wertenbaker:
The ill-fated child now turns his anger on himself. He leans against the sword and drives it deep into his side. With his last strength, he holds the girl in a tender embrace.
A jet of blood hits her blanched cheeks.
Sad wedding feast to the music of death (Wertenbaker 56).
This last scene reiterates the themes of the play and shows how those themes have developed and worked out through the actions of the characters. Creon remains alive, but he is a broken man left with a dead son and a dead "daughter-in-law, and finally with a dead wife, for she kills herself when she hears the news of her son. Creon remains with a strong desire to be further punished for the great sin he has committed:
Someone take this senseless man away,
who killed you--child--not ...