Dramatic Aspects of Antigone

In the opening section to Antigone, the Prologue, the characters of Antigone and Ismene are introduced, and the clash between them is made clear. The underlying myth of Oedipus and the House of Thebes would have been well-known to Athenian audiences from whom this play was written, and Antigone makes reference at the outset to the essential fact that the ills to be presented in this play trace directly back to the sin of Oedipus in trying to outrun his fate:

Tell me this: are there any evils coming from Oedipus that Zeus does not fulfill through us--the two still living? (Wertenbaker 7).

The language in the older translation by Fitts and Fitzgerald says essentially the same thing, but the tone is different. Where the Wertenbaker version shows Antigone from the beginning as an aggressive and angry woman, the older version shows her with a greater sense of being a victim:

You would think that we had already suffered enough

That you and I have not gone through (Fitts and Fitzgerald 886).

In this opening scene, the two sisters speak about their dead brothers and about the edict that has been imposed by Creon forbidding the burial of Polyneikes. According to the legend, Polyneikes had asked his sister to give him a decent burial, and therefore she feels a particular duty to fulfill his wishes and to keep her promise to him by doing so. The discussion sets up the primary conflicts of the play, conflicts between loyal

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r cry of a bird who discovers an empty nest, the bed stripped of nestlings. Just so, when she sees the body stripped of dust, she howls, she wails and calls down evil curses on those who have done this (Wertenbaker 23). The Guard has brought her before Creon reluctantly because Antigone is well-known and liked, but the Guard also still feels the bitterness of his earlier censure at Creon's hands and wants to prove himself to the state. The conflict between Creon and Antigone rests on the issue of where the greater power lies, in the state or in the gods. Creon demands to know why she has transgressed the law that he set forth, and her answer shows that she believes in a higher law: It was not Zeus who made this proclamation. Nor did Justice, which lives with the gods below, prescribe the observance of such laws to men. And I did not suppose that your proclamations were so strong, that a mortal could thereby overrule the unwritten, the immutable laws of the gods (Wertenbaker 24). Creon answers that she is showing excessive pride in her refusal to obey his laws: This girl has already shown hubris when she knowingly transgressed the laws laid down. And she goes further, more hubris, double hubris, when she boasts of what

Category: Literature - D