Conflict Between Antigone & King Creon

The tale of Antigone is a tragedy, one that clearly demonstrates that might does not always make right. Despite being written more than 3000 years ago, the central dilemma in Antigone is one that remains highly relevant to contemporary society and individuals. For in the conflict between Antigone and King Creon is wrapped the larger conflict between the individual and the state. Antigone is outraged that King Creon has declared that her warrior brother cannot receive a proper burial. An enemy of the state, her brother is denied such a burial by King Creon's dictate. Despite his dictate, Antigone buries her brother in defiance of King Creon's law. As such, Antigone is sentenced to death and dies for the principles she believes in, ones that go against the State's laws.

When Ismene, Antigone's sister, does not have the heart to bury her brother in defiance of the law, Antigone volunteers to bury him herself. As she informs her sister, "I know that I please where I am most bound to please," (Sophocles, 463). Unlike Ismene, who admits she has "no strength" to "defy the state," Antigone's actions are based on her belief that what she does is in accordance with a higher law than state law. Antigone maintains that in burying her brother, she is obeying the higher law of the Gods. She views Creon's law as unjust, so she willingly invokes his wrath to obey the laws of the Gods, which she feels are more just and take precedence over Creon's laws.

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ier" government and local clergy. However, like Antigone, he believed that the actions he was taking were more just and right than the unjust might he viewed the government and clergy exhibiting to oppress African Americans. In a letter he wrote to the local clergy while incarcerated, we see that his views are quite akin to those of Antigone and her conflict with Creon. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "�one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that �an unjust law is no law at all.' Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law" (p. 3). To Antigone, Creon's dictate against burying her brother is out of harmony with what she views as the law of the Gods or the moral law. As such, she is willing to meet her death with dignity rather than live in an unjust society whose laws are enforced by the mighty, whether they are moral or immoral. We see when Creon asks Antigone whether or not she transgressed the law willingly that her reply shows that she adheres to a higher standard of l

Category: Literature - C