essay about antigone

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone

Analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 29, 2020 • ( 0 )

Within this single drama—in great part, a harsh critique of Athenian society and the Greek city-state in general—Sophocles tells of the eternal struggle between the state and the individual, human and natural law, and the enormous gulf between what we attempt here on earth and what fate has in store for us all. In this magnificent dramatic work, almost incidentally so, we find nearly every reason why we are now what we are.

—Victor D. Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom

With Antigone Sophocles forcibly demonstrates that the power of tragedy derives not from the conflict between right and wrong but from the confrontation between right and right. As the play opens the succession battle between the sons of Oedipus—Polynices and Eteocles—over control of Thebes has resulted in both of their deaths. Their uncle Creon, who has now assumed the throne, asserts his authority to end a destructive civil war and decrees that only Eteocles, the city’s defender, should receive honorable burial. Polynices, who has led a foreign army against Thebes, is branded a traitor. His corpse is to be left on the battlefield “to be chewed up by birds and dogs and violated,” with death the penalty for anyone who attempts to bury him and supply the rites necessary for the dead to reach the underworld. Antigone, Polynices’ sister, is determined to defy Creon’s order, setting in motion a tragic collision between opposed laws and duties: between natural and divine commands that dictate the burial of the dead and the secular edicts of a ruler determined to restore civic order, between family allegiance and private conscience and public duty and the rule of law that restricts personal liberty for the common good. Like the proverbial immovable object meeting an irresistible force, Antigone arranges the impact of seemingly irreconcilable conceptions of rights and responsibilities, producing one of drama’s enduring illuminations of human nature and the human condition.

Antigone is one of Sophocles’ greatest achievements and one of the most influential dramas ever staged. “Between 1790 and 1905,” critic George Steiner reports, “it was widely held by European poets, philosophers, [and] scholars that Sophocles’ Antigone was not only the fi nest of Greek tragedies, but a work of art nearer to perfection than any other produced by the human spirit.” Its theme of the opposition between the individual and authority has resonated through the centuries, with numerous playwrights, most notably Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, and Athol Fugard grafting contemporary concerns and values onto the moral and political dramatic framework that Sophocles established. The play has elicited paradoxical responses reflecting changing cultural and moral imperatives. Antigone, who has been described as “the first heroine of Western drama,” has been interpreted both as a heroic martyr to conscience and as a willfully stubborn fanatic who causes her own death and that of two other innocent people, forsaking her duty to the living on behalf of the dead. Creon has similarly divided critics between censure and sympathy. Despite the play’s title, some have suggested that the tragedy is Creon’s, not Antigone’s, and it is his abuse of authority and his violations of personal, family, and divine obligations that center the drama’s tragedy. The brilliance of Sophocles’ play rests in the complexity of motive and the competing absolute claims that the drama displays. As novelist George Eliot observed,

It is a very superficial criticism which interprets the character of Creon as that of hypocritical tyrant, and regards Antigone as a blameless victim. Coarse contrasts like this are not the materials handled by great dramatists. The exquisite art of Sophocles is shown in the touches by which he makes us feel that Creon, as well as Antigone, is contending for what he believes to be the right, while both are also conscious that, in following out one principle, they are laying themselves open to just blame for transgressing another.

Eliot would call the play’s focus the “antagonism of valid principles,” demonstrating a point of universal significance that “Wherever the strength of a man’s intellect, or moral sense, or affection brings him into opposition with the rules which society has sanctioned, there is renewed conflict between Antigone and Creon; such a man must not only dare to be right, he must also dare to be wrong—to shake faith, to wound friendship, perhaps, to hem in his own powers.” Sophocles’ Antigone is less a play about the pathetic end of a victim of tyranny or the corruption of authority than about the inevitable cost and con-sequence between competing imperatives that define the human condition. From opposite and opposed positions, both Antigone and Creon ultimately meet at the shared suffering each has caused. They have destroyed each other and themselves by who they are and what they believe. They are both right and wrong in a world that lacks moral certainty and simple choices. The Chorus summarizes what Antigone will vividly enact: “The powerful words of the proud are paid in full with mighty blows of fate, and at long last those blows will teach us wisdom.”

As the play opens Antigone declares her intention to her sister Ismene to defy Creon’s impious and inhumane order and enlists her sister’s aid to bury their brother. Ismene responds that as women they must not oppose the will of men or the authority of the city and invite death. Ismene’s timidity and deference underscores Antigone’s courage and defiance. Antigone asserts a greater allegiance to blood kinship and divine law declaring that the burial is a “holy crime,” justified even by death. Ismene responds by calling her sister “a lover of the impossible,” an accurate description of the tragic hero, who, according to scholar Bernard Knox, is Sophocles’ most important contribution to drama: “Sophocles presents us for the first time with what we recognize as a ‘tragic hero’: one who, unsupported by the gods and in the face of human opposition, makes a decision which springs from the deepest layer of his individual nature, his physis , and then blindly, ferociously, heroically maintains that decision even to the point of self-destruction.” Antigone exactly conforms to Knox’s description, choosing her conception of duty over sensible self-preservation and gender-prescribed submission to male authority, turning on her sister and all who oppose her. Certain in her decision and self-sufficient, Antigone rejects both her sister’s practical advice and kinship. Ironically Antigone denies to her sister, when Ismene resists her will, the same blood kinship that claims Antigone’s supreme allegiance in burying her brother. For Antigone the demands of the dead overpower duty to the living, and she does not hesitate in claiming both to know and act for the divine will. As critic Gilbert Norwood observes, “It is Antigone’s splendid though perverse valor which creates the drama.”

Before the apprehended Antigone, who has been taken in the act of scattering dust on her brother’s corpse, lamenting, and pouring libations, is brought before Creon and the dramatic crux of the play, the Chorus of The-ban elders delivers what has been called the fi nest song in all Greek tragedy, the so-called Ode to Man, that begins “Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.” This magnificent celebration of human power over nature and resourcefulness in reason and invention ends with a stark recognition of humanity’s ultimate helplessness—“Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain.” Death will test the resolve and principles of both Antigone and Creon, while, as critic Edouard Schuré asserts, “It brings before us the most extraordinary psychological evolution that has ever been represented on stage.”

When Antigone is brought in judgment before Creon, obstinacy meets its match. Both stand on principle, but both reveal the human source of their actions. Creon betrays himself as a paranoid autocrat; Antigone as an individual whose powerful hatred outstrips her capacity for love. She defiantly and proudly admits that she is guilty of disobeying Creon’s decree and that he has no power to override divine law. Nor does Antigone concede any mitigation of her personal obligation in the competing claims of a niece, a sister, or a citizen. Creon is maddened by what he perceives to be Antigone’s insolence in justifying her crime by diminishing his authority, provoking him to ignore all moderating claims of family, natural, or divine extenuation. When Ismene is brought in as a co-conspirator, she accepts her share of guilt in solidarity with her sister, but again Antigone spurns her, calling her “a friend who loves in words,” denying Ismene’s selfless act of loyalty and sympathy with a cold dismissal and self-sufficiency, stating, “Never share my dying, / don’t lay claim to what you never touched.” However, Ismene raises the ante for both Antigone and Creon by asking her uncle whether by condemning Antigone he will kill his own son’s betrothed. Creon remains adamant, and his judgment on Antigone and Ismene, along with his subsequent argument with his son, Haemon, reveals that Creon’s principles are self-centered, contradictory, and compromised by his own pride, fears, and anxieties. Antigone’s challenge to his authority, coming from a woman, is demeaning. If she goes free in defiance of his authority, Creon declares, “I am not the man, she is.” To the urging of Haemon that Creon should show mercy, tempering his judgment to the will of Theban opinion that sympathizes with Antigone, Creon asserts that he cares nothing for the will of the town, whose welfare Creon’s original edict against Polynices was meant to serve. Creon, moreover, resents being schooled in expediency by his son. Inflamed by his son’s advocacy on behalf of Antigone, Creon brands Haemon a “woman’s slave,” and after vacillating between stoning Antigone and executing her and her sister in front of Haemon, Creon rules that Antigone alone is to perish by being buried alive. Having begun the drama with a decree that a dead man should remain unburied, Creon reverses himself, ironically, by ordering the premature burial of a living woman.

Antigone, being led to her entombment, is shown stripped of her former confidence and defiance, searching for the justification that can steel her acceptance of the fate that her actions have caused. Contemplating her living descent into the underworld and the death that awaits her, Antigone regrets dying without marriage and children. Gone is her reliance on divine and natural law to justify her act as she equivocates to find the emotional source to sustain her. A husband and children could be replaced, she rationalizes, but since her mother and father are dead, no brother can ever replace Polynices. Antigone’s tortured logic here, so different from the former woman of principle, has been rejected by some editors as spurious. Others have judged this emotionally wrought speech essential for humanizing Antigone, revealing her capacity to suffer and her painful search for some consolation.

The drama concludes with the emphasis shifted back to Creon and the consequences of his judgment. The blind prophet Teiresias comes to warn Creon that Polynices’ unburied body has offended the gods and that Creon is responsible for the sickness that has descended on Thebes. Creon has kept from Hades one who belongs there and is sending to Hades another who does not. The gods confirm the rightness of Antigone’s action, but justice evades the working out of the drama’s climax. The release of Antigone comes too late; she has hung herself. Haemon commits suicide, and Eurydice, Creon’s wife, kills herself after cursing Creon for the death of their son. Having denied the obligation of family, Creon loses his own. Creon’s rule, marked by ignoring or transgressing cosmic and family law, is shown as ultimately inadequate and destructive. Creon is made to realize that he has been rash and foolish, that “Whatever I have touched has come to nothing.” Both Creon and Antigone have been pushed to terrifying ends in which what truly matters to both are made starkly clear. Antigone’s moral imperatives have been affirmed but also their immense cost in suffering has been exposed. Antigone explores a fundamental rift between public and private worlds. The central opposition in the play between Antigone and Creon, between duty to self and duty to state, dramatizes critical antimonies in the human condition. Sophocles’ genius is his resistance of easy and consoling simplifications to resolve the oppositions. Both sides are ultimately tested; both reveal the potential for greatness and destruction.

24 lectures on Greek Tragedy by Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver.

Antigone Study Guide

Sophocles (c. 497/6- 406/5 BC) is, along with Aeschylus and Euripides, one of the three ancient Greek tragic playwrights by whom complete plays survive. He won at least twenty victories in the tragic competitions, and never came third (last), a feat which suggests that he was the most successful of the three. Seven complete plays of his survive, of which Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus are the most well-known and frequently performed. The following three essays explore the play's themes and context.

Sophocles' Antigone in Context by Professor Chris Carey

Greek tragedy is a remarkable fictional creation. We are used to a theatre which can embrace past and present, fictitious and historical, bizarre fantasy and mundane reality. The Athenian theatre was far more limited than this. Like virtually all Greek poetry at all periods in antiquity, its subject matter was heroic myth. Invented plots with fictitious people and events were very few (and not found before the late fifth century). Historical tragedy (the staple of theatre from Shakespeare to the present) again was very rare. With very few exceptions, tragedy was about heroes. For Greeks at any period, the world of the heroes meant the world which they met in epic poetry, and especially Homer, the ultimate Greek classic.

Because we are so used to Greek tragedy, we don't usually stop to notice how strange all this is. The heroes are members of a superior elite. And the epic world is always ruled by kings. It has assemblies, and they matter; but they don't have power. Hereditary monarchy had become a rarity in Greece long before the rise of tragedy. So the epic world was politically remote. In fact, of all Greek states in the classical period, Athens was probably the furthest removed from the political world of epic. In democratic Athens public policy and legislation were in the hands of the mass assembly. Yet for two hundred years and more mass audiences sat in the theatre of Dionysus and watched plays about kings sponsored by the democratic state.

The issue is of course more complicated than this. Firstly, the world of the epic was a very familiar world to the Athenian audience. Epic poetry was performed every year at the civic festivals, which meant that the heroic age was a shared possession for the vast audience in the Athenian theatre, not just the property of an educated elite. Secondly, the world inside the plays and the world in which the audience lived were engaged in a complex and shifting relationship. In any attempt to represent or even to understand the past, the present acts as frame which shapes presentation or perception; we may or may not be aware of it, but it is always there. Literature which deals with the past therefore has a foot in two worlds. This includes Greek tragedy. Tragedy is riddled with anachronisms, on politics, gender, ethnicity, status, even technology (people in tragedy write letters and suicide notes, for instance, while in the epic world writing is completely absent except for one very mysterious passage in Homer's Iliad ). The effect is to make the tragic world a middle space where heroic past and present meet.

This makes the tragic stage an ideal space to explore political issues of interest to democratic Athens. Not all tragedy is political and not all of the political questions are unique either to Athens or to democracy. But Athens (with rare exceptions) was unusual among the classical Greek states in its openness to dispute and dissent and Athenian drama is almost unique in Greek literature in its ability to explore areas of actual or potential political tension.

This is true in the case of Antigone . Anyone in the audience listening to the newly appointed regent Creon might well catch echoes of contemporary sentiments about loyalty to the city. The rhetoric of devotion to the city above all else and at any cost which Sophocles puts in his mouth sounds very like the rhetoric of the democratic statesman Pericles in the historian Thucydides (Pericles even goes so far as to claim that we should all be lovers of the city). The sentiment has a powerful appeal. This was a world of citizen soldiers and a citizen was expected to fight and if necessary die for the city. As Creon says: 'This land - our land - is the ship that preserves us and it is on this ship that we sail straight and as she prospers, so will we.' But his insistence on loyalty to the state to the exclusion of all other allegiance prolongs into the present the rifts of the past and proves disastrous for the next generation of the family and robs him of his family.

The issue of burial which forms the focus for conflict in this play had political echoes. Burial was a vitally important aspect both of family and of civic life. For the city it was a means both of honouring devotion and also of punishing disloyalty. The world of this play is not just postwar but post-civil-war. The dead Polynices came with a foreign army to take his home city by force and died in the attempt. In Sophocles' Athens anyone executed for treason could not be buried in Attica. So some features of the play probably sounded very familiar. Democratic Athens demanded a lot of its citizens and at the probable date of Antigone this was visible especially in the treatment of the dead. As far as we know Athens monopolized its war dead to a degree unmatched by any other Greek state. Where most Greek states simply buried their dead on the battlefield, Athenian practice was to collect and burn the dead and bring the bones home. They then held a state funeral and buried the war dead in communal state graves (excavations for the new Athens metro unearthed one such burial just a decade ago) with no designation of family, just the name of their tribe. The war dead are now the property of the city. At the same time private grave memorials almost disappear. It looks as though only public burials, and specifically those for the dead warriors, matter. But by tradition the family not only buried its dead but also made offerings every year at the family tombs; and the job of preparing the dead and the lead in mourning fell to the women. By the late fifth century the private memorials, including memorials for those who died in war, become more common, and it looks as though the tensions between the demands of the state and the needs of the family have been resolved. But tensions there probably were and death and burial was one of the key areas. Issues such as family or individual versus state are Greek issues as well as Athenian issues. But they were probably present in Athens to an unusual degree and were at their most visible at the time Antigone was performed in the late 440s.

Antigone is not about Athens' burial of the war dead. And it is not about contemporary democratic ideology. It is a story about a clash of wills, a clash of principles and a clash of loyalties. About power and its limits and legitimacy. About commitment, tenacity and integrity. And it is not a sermon. It throws up more questions than it answers. It could play in any theatre of the Greek world, as it has played in countless theatres in many languages since. But for its Athenian audience the echoes of contemporary areas of tension gave it an added intensity.

Questions and Activities:

How would the experiences of ancient Greek theatrical audiences have differed from those of modern ones? How might that affect our appreciation of Sophocles' Antigone ?
If you were to translate the basic story of the play into modern Britain, what aspects would you change, what would you retain, and why?
What difference would it make if Antigone were staged in a contemporary setting, rather than the distant past?

Antigone and Creon in Conflict by Dr. Dimitra Kokkini

Antigone is a play full of intensity. Audience (and scholarly) responses have always been conflicted when it comes to analysing both characters' arguments. For some, secular law and rationality, as expressed by Creon, are right, while Antigone's religious approach is to be rejected as irrational. For others, Antigone's argument is the only one with validity. The remaining views recognise various degrees of legitimacy in both arguments, eventually proving the impossibility of the task in discerning right from wrong in this conflict.

Despite the fact that this explosive clash highlights the vast differences between Creon and Antigone in terms of world views and loyalties, it also brings to the fore their similarities in terms of characterisation. Creon continuously asserts his power, both in terms of social and gender status; he is the ruler of the city, in fact, its defender in what is seen an unlawful attack by Polyneices against his own fatherland (the gravest of sins in civic terms). Moreover, he is a man, faced with an insubordinate, stubborn, powerless female who is also a member of his own family and under his jurisdiction and protection. Antigone, on the other hand, continuously asserts the validity on her argument in religious and moral terms, being, at the same time, constantly aware of her limitations due to her gender and position in the city and her own family. Yet, although they both take pains to highlight the unbridgeable gap between them, contrasting civic/rational (Creon) and family/religious (Antigone) duty, they are remarkably similar in the way they approach and respond to one another. Both are characterised by unyielding stubbornness, a deep belief in the rightness of their own value system, and complete failure in identifying any validity whatsoever in each other's argument. Both insist on upholding their respective values with obstinate determination to the end: Antigone dies unchanged, whereas Creon's change of heart comes too late having first caused the destruction of his entire family.

More importantly, neither of them are easily relatable - or indeed sympathetic - characters. Antigone is often too self-righteous, obsessed with honouring Polyneices at all costs. She is dismissive of Ismene, almost indifferent to her betrothed, Haemon. Creon is equally obsessed with administering what he perceives as justice, as well as upholding his law and punishing the offender, he is cruel and dismissive towards his son. It is easier for us, the audience, to identify with Ismene, Eurydice or Haemon. Ismene, a foil for Antigone and her exact opposite, is arguably less determined and daring than her sister; but she is also much closer to an everyday person, aware of her limitations and hesitant to challenge authority and the laws imposed by a ruler. Antigone may be admirable for her bravery and resolution, but she is also extraordinarily distant to ordinary human beings. Although she presents herself as a weak woman and speaks of all the typical female experiences she will be missing with her untimely death, she functions more like a symbol - some say she is almost genderless. Ismene, however, appears to be more human, displaying a more conventional kind of femininity, which renders her pitiful but also more relatable as a character.

In a similar way, we feel more pity and sympathy for Haemon than we do for the two protagonists. His attachment to her is evident in a rare tragic instance of a young man being in love, but it is hardly reciprocated. Antigone's fixation on honouring Polyneices leaves little room for the development of any other relationship. Haemon fights, unsuccessfully, with his father in an attempt to save his betrothed and, when this fails due to Creon's refusal to repeal his decision, his response is rash and emotional. This is a young man in love, who is denied his chance to be with his beloved and, on seeing her dead decides to take his own life out of grief. In contrast with Antigone, whose suicide is consistent with her characterisation throughout the play and is directly related to her immovable value system, Haemon's suicide is full of pathos and his motivation feels more easily understandable in terms of personal relationships and youthful desperation. His death functions as the trigger for Eurydice's suicide, the culmination of Creon's catastrophic decisions and Antigone's unyielding position. Her appearance on stage is limited to one scene, with her uttering one single question to the Messenger before departing in silence, ominously, after the death of her son is confirmed, never to reappear on stage.

Antigone and Creon are caught in an impossible circle of stubbornness, miscommunication and destruction. Together, they manage to cause utter grief and ruin for their family caught in a conflict of ever-increasing intensity as they pull further and further apart. Antigone's death and Creon's remorse cause pity and reveal the utter futility of their conflict at the end of the tragedy; but the fate of the other characters, the innocent bystanders entangled in this mighty clash of wills, beg for our sympathy and compassion as much as the protagonists, if not more.

1. Which character from the play do you sympathise with the most and why?

2. 'Creon and Antigone are more similar than different to one another'. To what extent do you agree with this claim?

3. To what extent must tragedy always depend on conflict?

Conflict and Contrast in Sophocles' Antigone by Dr. Tom Mackenzie

Perhaps more than any other Greek tragedy, Sophocles' Antigone has captured the interests of philosophers, ranging from Aristotle (fourth century BC) to Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and beyond. Most famously, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) saw the tragedy as depicting, at its core, a conflict between the abstract principles of the household (the oikos) and the state (the polis), embodied in the characters of Antigone and Creon respectively. When we come to watch the play, it is not hard to see why this interpretation has proven immensely influential. On a purely formal level, the two characters dominate the action more than any of the others. It is their decisions - Creon's to impose the sanction against burying Polyneices, and Antigone's to bury him nonetheless - that cause the events of the narrative. Antigone is the eponymous heroine whose initial speech opens the play, whilst Creon receives more lines than any other character and is the exclusive focus of our attention after Antigone's departure in the latter part of the tragedy. The two characters thus bookend the action onstage, a structuring device that seems to illustrate the contrast between them. It is sometimes claimed that Greek tragedy typically focusses on a single character, but if that is the case, then Antigone is an exception to this tendency, for Creon and Antigone appear to be of equal concern.

Many aspects of the play can be taken to suggest that the two characters are indeed representative of certain contrasting principles. Perhaps the most obvious contrast is that between male and female: Ismene initially opposes Antigone's act of defiance partly on the grounds that they are women, and so 'cannot fight against men'. Creon further emphasizes the gender division in claiming that Antigone will be 'the man' and not him, if she is to challenge his authority with impunity. Several other statements of his also betray this anxiety. Antigone's defiance of her uncle, her closest living male relative, markedly transcends the normal behaviour expected of women in fifth-century Athens, a notoriously patriarchal society with severe restrictions on the freedom of women. The contrast in genders also evokes wider political and cosmic polarities: women's influence was supposed to be restricted to the oikos, whilst Athenian politics was exclusively a male activity: the welfare of the city was thought to be the responsibility of free males alone. Antigone's act is one of loyalty towards a close relative, a member of her oikos - but it is seen by Creon as an act against the interests of the state. His edict was pronounced in order to protect Thebes, and he explicitly criticises anyone who 'values a loved one greater than his city', a statement which inevitably recalls Antigone's defiance. Indeed, part of this initial speech was quoted by the fourth-century Athenian orator Demosthenes as a positive, patriotic sentiment, a fact which may suggest that Creon, at least at this point in the play, could be taken to embody civic values.

Yet Antigone herself does not see the conflict as one between the oikos and the polis so much as one between the man-made laws of the city, and the unwritten, permanent laws of the the gods. It is to these unwritten laws that she appeals in justifying her actions against Creon's proclamations. The Greek word for 'laws', nomoi, has a broader scope than the English term conveys - it can be translated as 'conventions' or 'customs' and can cover the religious duties such as burial of the dead. There is nothing metaphorical about such 'unwritten' nomoi: Aristotle even quotes Antigone in recommending lawyers to appeal to unwritten laws when the written laws are against them. For Antigone, there is a conflict between these unwritten laws, and those pronounced by Creon.

Accordingly, the two characters have different conceptions of justice and the just. The Greek word for justice, dikē, and its related adjectives, occur frequently throughout the play. Both Creon and his opponents, Antigone and Haimon, appeal to dikē to support their decisions. Creon seems to identify justice with the will of the ruling party, whilst for Antigone and Haimon, it is a super-human concept that is independent of the arbitrary decisions of any mortal ruler. This dispute reflects contemporary debates surrounding the nature of justice: Plato, writing in the first half of the fourth century BC, depicts the fifth-century thinker Socrates as arguing that justice is natural and objective, against opponents who argue that justice is simply the will of the more powerful. In Sophocles' play, there is little doubt that Creon's conception of justice is proven inadequate. That the downfall of his family and his personal suffering come as a direct result of his actions is assumed by all remaining characters at the end of the play. His folly reveals a central predicament in Sophoclean drama and in Greek theology: there is a divine, cosmic system of justice, but it is one that is usually impossible for mortals to understand until it is too late. The motif of 'learning too late' is commonplace in Greek tragedy, and Creon conforms to this literary convention, as the chorus' statements at the end of the play make clear. Only a select few mortals - notably the blind prophet Teiresias - can have a privileged, albeit still limited, understanding of this system before the catastrophes unfold.

'Justice', or rather dikē, in this sense of 'divine order' was taken by some early Greek philosophers as a governing principle, not only of ethical behaviour, but also of the rules of physics. Anaximander (early 6th century BC) saw the universe as composed fundamentally from opposite qualities - such as the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet - that give each other 'justice and reparation' for injustices committed, as a result of which some balance is maintained in the universe. Similarly, Heraclitus (late 6th century BC) saw 'justice' as keeping the Sun within its established limits. Viewed in this context, we can see Creon's actions as violations of this cosmic order: the deceased Polyneices ought to be buried, but Creon prevents that from happening; conversely, he orders Antigone to be entombed whilst still alive. After his punishment, he himself becomes, in the words of the messenger, a 'living corpse'. The balance is thus settled for Creon's blurring of the distinction between the living and the dead by refusing Polyneices' burial.

This enactment of cosmic 'justice' might be taken to support the notion that Creon and Antigone embody contrary principles. Yet their actions can also be explained by recognisably human motivations: Antigone no longer fears death, and even expresses suicidal thoughts, because of the immense suffering that she has experienced in the form of her family's tribulations; Creon is a new ruler who is paranoid that his rule is not accepted - he refuses to back down as he fears it will undermine his authority. The characters appeal to general principles, which place their specific conflict in a wider cosmic context - it is perhaps this feature which has aroused such philosophical interest in the play - but they are not reducible to those principles alone. Creon is a flawed and inconsistent ruler, and Antigone's ultimately self-destructive act is detrimental to her household, for it prevents her from continuing the family line. The play thus presents conflicts of principle and of character, but offers no easy resolutions: Antigone's desire for Polyneices' burial may be vindicated by the course of the narrative, but the gods still allow her to perish. In developing the imagined consequences of these conflicts of both character and principle, Sophocles unsettlingly exemplifies one of the virtues that Aristotle identified in the plots of great tragedies: that the course of events seems inevitable, but only in retrospect.

Questions and activities:

1. Should you be more loyal towards your family or towards your country? Come up with reasons in support of both sides of the argument - how do your reasons compare with what is said by Antigone and Creon?

2. If we do not agree with traditional Greek beliefs about the the gods and justice, how does that affect our appreciation of the play?

3. Given that she knows that this action will lead to her death, is Antigone right to bury Polyneices? Explain your answer with reference to the text.

4. I've learned through my pain (Creon): What exactly has Creon learned? Does the play make this clear and does it matter?

The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone” Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

The modern person’s interest in ancient tragedies is quite extraordinary. In their works many centuries ago, Ancient authors raised ethical and philosophical issues relevant to their time. After more than two millennia, these same problems find a response in the heart of modern man. A modern person unexpectedly finds answers to many difficult questions when he gets acquainted with the works of ancient poets, philosophers, and playwrights. This tragedy raises many questions, the importance of which is reflected and relevant even today, and the main character can teach people of the twenty-first century a lot.

The ancient Greek tragedy “Antigone” was written by Sophocles and narrates about a woman fighting against a royal decree that hurt her personal feelings and principles. Antigone is a girl who has crossed out her future by her act and has incurred the wrath of King Creon. She has the following features: courage, pluck, and some notes of asceticism. The heroic line intersects with the lyrical one: she cries and does not want to die, making Antigone a living person with a lively character. A distinctive feature of the main characters of Sophocles is their pronounced individualization.

The conflict began with the fact that Antigone’s brothers – Eteocles and Polynices – fought with each other and, unfortunately, died. According to the decree of the Theban king Creon, Eteocles was to be buried as a hero. The body of Polynices was ordered to be left unburied, under the scorching sun, as a traitor who went to war against Thebes. Disobeying the decree, Antigone herself buries her brother’s body according to the funeral rite established by the gods. For this, Creon ordered Antigone to be walled up in a cave, but the girl, faithful to her duty to fulfill sacred laws, did not humble before Creon. She preferred death to obedience to a cruel king and committed suicide.

The key feature of the image of Antigone is her fantastic willpower. She demonstrates this feature in the struggle with Creon for the right to bury her brother according to the ancestral rite. “I know that I will die— of course I do— even if you had not doomed me by proclamation. If I shall die before my time, I count that a profit” (505-510). She honors the ancient law of the tribal society, and she does not doubt the correctness of the decision made. Feeling that she is right, Antigone boldly challenges Creon. Sophocles’ Antigone consciously goes towards death, but, like any person, it is bitter for her to part with a life that promises so many joys to a young girl. She does not regret what happened, but about her dying youth, she is dying, not mourned by anyone.

By the power of her mind and a big heart that knows how to love, not hate, Antigone chose her fate, which confronted Antigone with Creon. Creon embodies the image of a stern and inflexible ruler who puts his will above everything. This man considers any resistance to his order as an anti-state act, and he is ready to apply the cruelest laws to people who go against the state. From the very beginning, the dialogue with Ismene reveals the strong personality of Antigone, which, according to the choir, she inherited from her father. “Be as you choose to be; but for myself I myself will bury him. It will be good to die, so doing” (80-85). Antigone is shown as a determined and firm girl who challenged the autocracy of Creon.

One of the most profound conflicts of modern society – the conflict between generic unwritten laws and state laws – is revealed in this tragedy. In the ancestral community, religious beliefs, rooted in the depths of centuries, prescribed a person to sacredly honor blood relations and observe all rites about blood relatives. On the other hand, every citizen of the polis in Sophocles was obliged to follow state laws, which sometimes sharply contradicted traditional family and tribal norms. Sophocles’ Creon is a supporter of the idea of unswerving observance of state laws, written ones. On the other hand, Antigone puts family and ancestral laws, sanctified by religious authority, above these laws.

The great tragedian wanted to carry out in his work the idea that for the happiness of the citizens of the polis, unity between state and family-generic laws is necessary. The condemnation of tyranny is also expressed at the end of the tragedy in Creon’s remorse and self-flagellation. The theme raised by Sophocles in the play is the theme of duty and family, which is still relevant to this day. Only a person whose thoughts are pure and whose actions are guided by virtue can realize the concept of duty and family and the need to defend it. Sacrifice in the name of the family is another cornerstone theme of this play, the relevance of which has not disappeared even today.

Unfortunately, the family is gradually moving into second place in the modern world, giving way to a career. People increasingly prefer to live for their pleasure, travel, build a career rather than start a family and have children. Of course, each person decides how to live, but the family was and still remains the foundation of human society. Antigone is a character who loves desperately and furiously; she does not put any restrictions or conditions on love. Perhaps this is the kind of dedication and passion that modern people lack because they most often prefer comfort and safety. On the other hand, Antigone represents love and rage, which neither the king nor even death itself will stop. The themes of self-sacrifice, love, family and the conflict between the written and unwritten laws are reflected in this play and are still relevant.

Antigone’s Courage in "Antigone" by Sophocles
The Ancient Greek Play Antigone by Sophocle
Sophocles’ “Antigone”: The Synopsis of the Play
“Antigone”: Evaluation and Synthesis
The Figure of Hector in Homer’s “The Iliad”
Hubris (Pride) of Odysseus and Oedipus
Telemachus: The Son of Ithaca Tsar, Odysseus, and Penelope
Neoclassicism and Aurora and Cephalus (1811)
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, November 4). The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone”. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ancient-greek-tragedy-antigone/

"The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone”." IvyPanda , 4 Nov. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/the-ancient-greek-tragedy-antigone/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone”'. 4 November.

IvyPanda . 2022. "The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone”." November 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ancient-greek-tragedy-antigone/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone”." November 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ancient-greek-tragedy-antigone/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone”." November 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ancient-greek-tragedy-antigone/.

Antigone was the third play in the Oedipus trilogy written by the great Greek playwright Sophocles (c. 496 - c. 406 BCE). Produced around 441 BCE and receiving first prize at the Dionysia festival, the tragedy was actually written long before both Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus . In the play, Antigone returns to Thebes after the death of her father Oedipus. Her brothers Polynices and Eteocles have both been killed in the war between Argos and Thebes. Creon, Antigone's uncle, has assumed the leadership of Thebes and by decree refuses to grant the traitor Polynices a proper burial . Antigone chooses to disobey Creon and bury her brother herself. Having violated Creon's order, she is imprisoned and left to die, eventually hanging herself. Haemon, her fiancé and Creon's son, joins her, taking his own life. Finally persuaded by a prophet to change his mind, Creon is too late to save either his son or Antigone. His wife Eurydice commits suicide, blaming Creon for the death of her son. In the end, Creon is left alone.

Sophocles was born around 496/5 BCE to a wealthy family from Colonus, a deme near the heart of Athens . Unlike many of his fellow playwrights, he was active in Athenian politics, serving as a treasurer and a general in 441-440 BCE with the statesman Pericles . Later, he became a member of a select group of magistrates given the task of reorganizing finances and domestic affairs after the disastrous defeat of Athens at Syracuse (412-411 BCE). He had two sons; Iophon by his wife Nicostrate, and Ariston by his mistress Theoris, whose son Sophocles the Younger also became a minor playwright, like his uncle Iophon. Writing almost to the day he died, his final play of the Theban trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus , was presented in competition by Iophon in 401 BCE. Sophocles received eighteen victories in competition at Dionysia, more than both Aeschylus and Euripides . Although active in Athenian political circles, his plays rarely contain any references to contemporary events or issues, making the dating of his plays difficult. Unfortunately, of his over 120 plays, only seven have survived.

According to Edith Hamilton in her book The Greek Way , by the time of Sophocles, the “stream of life” (196) that had existed a few short years earlier during the time of Aeschylus was long gone. Athens was in decline. Hamilton believed Sophocles viewed life as being hard. The always conservative playwright - even in the matters of religion - still believed in his beloved city and its laws, always upholding the established order. To Hamilton, he embodied everything we know to be Greek. He was “direct, lucid, simple and reasonable” (199).

The Myth & Characters

Like many of the plays based on Greek myths, the audience was familiar with both the legend and its characters. In Antigone , an understanding of the story leading to her return to Thebes is essential. Long before Antigone left Oedipus and returned to her home in Thebes, her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had been at war. The two quarreled over the leadership of the city. After a long and heated debate, they finally agreed to serve alternate one-year reigns; however, at the end of Eteocles's first year, he refused to surrender the throne. Enraged, Polynices left Thebes and became an exile. Now living as an outcast, similar to his father Oedipus, he allied himself with the king of Argos and waged war against Thebes; this war is the subject of Aeschylus' play Seven against Thebes .

As the conflict progressed and casualties began to mount, it became apparent that the war was a stalemate. The solution was simple: the brothers would engage in a one-on-one combat. Unfortunately, the outcome was the unforeseen death of both brothers. Seizing the opportunity, Creon, the brothers' uncle, assumed the throne and decreed that only Eteocles body would be buried and given the proper rites; Polynices' body would be left exposed to the elements. This is where Sophocles' Antigone begins.

There are relatively few characters in the play:

the prophet Teiresias
Creon's wife Eurydice
two messengers
and, of course, the chorus.

The opening scene is at the royal palace of Thebes. Antigone and her sister Ismene stand outside the palace doors. They have both just learned of Creon's edict concerning their brothers. Antigone turns to her sister:

Creon will give the one of our two brothers honor in the tomb : the other none. Eteocles, with just observance treated, as law provides he has hidden under earth to have full honor with the dead below. (Grene, 22)

Polynices, being viewed as a traitor, will not receive a proper burial; a violation of religious tradition. Creon proclaimed that no one may bury him, leaving him “unwept, untombed, a rich sweet sight for the hungry birds' beholding and devouring” (22). While Ismene seems obviously upset, she responds that they are women and there is nothing they can do. However, Antigone has already devised a plan and asks her sister to join her and share in her labor. Fearing they will be punished for breaking the law, Ismene attempts to talk some sense into Antigone, but she refuses. Antigone exits: “Now I go to heap the burial mound for my dearest brother” (24).

Creon appears before the palace and addresses the chorus, asserting his authority as king:

When they two perished by a double fate, on one day struck and defiled each by each other's hand, now it comes that I hold all the power and the royal throne through close connection with the perished men. (27)

He declares that Eteocles who died defending Thebes will be granted holy rites, but Polynices who brought harm to Thebes shall not, leaving his body disgraced. Anyone who violates this edict will die. A guard arrives with troubling news:

Someone left the corpse just now, burial is all accomplished, thirsty dust strewn on the flesh, the ritual complete. (30)

Creon is incensed and orders the culprit to be found. He threatens the guard. The guard exits but quickly returns with Antigone. Creon faces her as the guard explains how she was caught. Antigone quietly listens and finally says, “I say I did it and I don't deny it” (37). Defiantly, she states that she understood the edict but still chose to challenge Creon's order as it did not come from Zeus . She could not leave her brother unburied. She completely realizes that she must die and will not grieve for she has buried her mother's son:

… what greater glory could I find than giving my own brother's funeral? (39)

In defense of his actions, Creon claims that no one else in Thebes sees it as she does, but Antigone quickly dismisses this; there are others who share in her belief, but Creon has everyone cowering. Despite the king's challenges, she refuses to submit or regret her actions. When Creon asserts that her brother was a criminal, she responds, “It was my brother, not a slave, who died” (40). With no regrets, she will accept her fate. Unmoved, Creon discloses that he is charging Ismene as well, for she shared in the planning of the burial. Ismene is brought before him under guard and stands next to her sister. Antigone pleads with her younger sister, “My death's enough” (41). However, Ismene tells Creon that her life is nothing without her sister and reminds Creon that if Antigone dies, he is taking his son's bride from him. The sisters are led away.

Haemon appears and confronts his father. Creon asks if his son has heard the vote that condemned his bride. In an attempt to persuade his father, Haemon reassures him that he still loves him; however, the city of Thebes is grieving for Antigone because she would not leave her brother unburied. Creon dismisses this and claims that his son's mind is poisoned; he should not let lust mislead his mind. Creon defends his actions and tells Haemon that obedience is essential to keep a city secure, so he must protect those who yield to order. He adds that he refuses to be beaten by a woman. Unshaken, Haemon vows that if she dies, her death will bring another. Before leaving he says, “If you weren't father, I should call you mad” (49).

After Haemon leaves, Creon announces that he is releasing Ismene, but Antigone is to be taken to a hollow cave and left to die. He departs as Antigone enters and addresses the chorus:

My last night of the sun, then never again. Death who beings all to sleep takes me alive to the shore of the river underground. Not for me was the marriage hymn, not will anyone start the song at a wedding of mine. Acheron is my bridegroom. (51)

Creon returns and orders her to be taken away. As she exits, the old blind prophet Teiresias arrives assisted by a young attendant. He tells Creon he must heed the signs. He pleads with Creon to rescind his order; all men make mistakes. As with the pleadings of his son, Creon is unmoved and reminds the old seer that he is speaking to the king. Teiresias responds:

You settled a living person without honor in a tomb; you keep up here that which belongs below; a corpse unburied and unholy. Not you, nor any god on high should have any business with this. The violation's yours. [...] men and women shall wail within your house and all the cities you fought in war … will all move against you. (60)

The old seer is escorted off by his attendant. Creon addresses the chorus and asks for their guidance. The chorus leader agrees with the old seer and advises the king to bury the dead properly and release Antigone. Creon finally submits and exits. A messenger soon enters and addresses the chorus. Both Antigone and Haemon are dead. As the messenger speaks to the chorus, Eurydice, Creon's wife appears from inside the palace and is told that her only surviving son's death. The messenger relates how they had given Polynices a proper burial and gone to release Antigone; however, when they arrived she had already hanged herself. Creon begged Haemon to return to the palace. Haemon refused, spat in his father's face and leaned on the blade of his sword. As he died, he embraced Antigone. “He found his marriage, in celebration in the halls of Hades .” (65)

Creon returns to the palace carrying Haemon's body. The messenger tells him of his wife's death, self-inflicted. Before she died, she cursed him as the killer of her children. To the messenger and chorus, Creon says, "I was dead, and you killed me again" (67). Creon prays for death:

Will no one strike and kill me with cutting sword? [...] My life is warped past cure. Fate unbearable has leapt down on my head. (68-69)

In some ways, the play is more about Creon than Antigone. According to Paul Roche in his book The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles , Oedipus and Creon both display the glory and weakness of a self-sufficient man. Creon initially did what he believed to be right; however, his vanity and unwillingness to listen to the advice of those around him eventually brought the downfall of his entire family. He is left standing alone before his palace, praying for the gods to take him.

Moses Hadas in his book Greek Drama said it is easy to praise Antigone as a saint and condemn Creon as a tyrant. However, Creon was right by not honoring the traitor Polynices with the proper burial rights; he was an enemy of the state. On the other hand, Antigone was in the wrong for openly disobeying an order of the king. Although Creon may have displayed a devotion to duty, Hadas believes the play is justly named for Antigone because she sacrificed her life and love for an ideal. However one may perceive Antigone, the play would continue to be performed. Authors would follow in Sophocles' footsteps and write about her, although often with a different ending; Euripides' lost play had her survive, marry Haemon and have children. Even poets such as Shelley and Goethe would write about her. Today many look to her as martyr and symbol of a person fighting for an ideal.

Subscribe to topic Related Content Books Cite This Work License

Bibliography

Guerber, H.A. Classical Mythology. Fall River Press, 2018.
Hadas, M. Greek Drama. Bantam Classics, 1965.
Hamilton, E. The Greek Way. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.
Hornblower, S. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Roche, P. The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles. Mentor, 1963.
Sophocles. Electra and Other Plays. Penguin Classics, 2018.
Sophocles. Sophocles I. University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Stapleton, M. The Illustrated Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology. Peter Bedrick Books, 1986.

About the Author

Translations

We want people all over the world to learn about history. Help us and translate this definition into another language!

Oedipus at Colonus

Oedipus the King

Seven Against Thebes

Ancient Greek Literature

Ancient Greek Tragedy

Free for the world, supported by you.

World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide.

Recommended Books

, published by University of Chicago Press (2013)

, published by Dover Publications (1993)

, published by Cambridge University Press (2011)

, published by Prestwick House, Inc. (2005)

, published by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (2001)

Cite This Work

Wasson, D. L. (2018, April 05). Antigone . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Antigone/

Chicago Style

Wasson, Donald L.. " Antigone ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified April 05, 2018. https://www.worldhistory.org/Antigone/.

Wasson, Donald L.. " Antigone ." World History Encyclopedia . World History Encyclopedia, 05 Apr 2018. Web. 30 Jun 2024.

License & Copyright

Submitted by Donald L. Wasson , published on 05 April 2018. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

Games & Quizzes
History & Society
Science & Tech
Biographies
Animals & Nature
Geography & Travel
Arts & Culture
On This Day
One Good Fact
New Articles
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Philosophy & Religion
Politics, Law & Government
World History
Health & Medicine
Browse Biographies
Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
Environment
Fossils & Geologic Time
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Sports & Recreation
Visual Arts
Demystified
Image Galleries
Infographics
Top Questions
Britannica Kids
Saving Earth
Space Next 50
Student Center

mythology. Greek. Hermes. (Roman Mercury)

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Greek Legends and Myths - Antigone in Greek Mythology
World History Encyclopedia - Antigone
Ancient Greece - Antigone
Encyclopedia Mythica - Antigone

Antigone , in Greek legend , the daughter born of the unwittingly incestuous union of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta . After her father blinded himself upon discovering that Jocasta was his mother and that, also unwittingly, he had slain his father, Antigone and her sister Ismene served as Oedipus’ guides, following him from Thebes into exile until his death near Athens. Returning to Thebes, they attempted to reconcile their quarreling brothers— Eteocles , who was defending the city and his crown, and Polyneices , who was attacking Thebes. Both brothers, however, were killed, and their uncle Creon became king. After performing an elaborate funeral service for Eteocles, he forbade the removal of the corpse of Polyneices, condemning it to lie unburied, declaring him to have been a traitor. Antigone, moved by love for her brother and convinced of the injustice of the command, buried Polyneices secretly. For that she was ordered by Creon to be executed and was immured in a cave, where she hanged herself. Her beloved, Haemon, son of Creon, committed suicide. According to another version of the story, Creon gave Antigone to Haemon to kill, but he secretly married her and they had a son. When this son went to Thebes to compete in athletic contests, Creon recognized him and put him to death, whereupon his parents committed suicide.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

As the play begins, the invading army of Argos has been driven from Thebes, but in the course of the battle, two sons of Oedipus (Eteocles and Polynices) have died fighting for opposing sides. Their uncle, Creon , is now king of Thebes. He decrees that the body of Polynices, who fought against his native city, will not be given burial rites but will be left to rot, as a warning to traitors. Creon further decrees that anyone who does try to bury Polynices will be punished with death.

Oedipus's daughters, Antigone and Ismene , are grieving for the loss of their two brothers, but Antigone is also defiant. She declares that the burial traditions are the unwritten laws of the gods, and are more important than the decrees of one man. She vows to give Polynices the proper burial rites. Ismene begs Antigone not defy the laws of the city and add to their family's tragedy. Antigone will not yield.

Antigone is caught in the act of performing funereal rites for her brother. Creon is furious, and has Antigone brought before him. She remains defiant, and says that she will not break the laws of the gods just to follow Creon's unjust law. Creon responds that she will die for her disobedience to the laws of the city. Ismene pleads with Creon to spare her sister's life. Antigone is engaged to Creon's son, Haemon , and the two of them are very much in love. But Creon is as unyielding in his allegiance to the rule of law as Antigone is to the unwritten traditional rules of the gods.

Haemon comes to Creon to ask him to reconsider. The citizens of Thebes are sympathetic to Antigone's desire to bury her brother, but are too afraid of Creon to speak up. Creon grows angry at his son's attempt to offer him advice. Their exchange grows heated. Haemon insists he is trying to prevent his father from pursuing an injustice. Creon accuses his son of siding with a reckless traitorous woman over his own father, to whom he owes obedience. Haemon threatens that the death of Antigone will lead to another death, and then rushes away, saying that Creon will never see him again.

Antigone laments her approaching death and all that she is giving up in refusing to bend to Creon's law. Guards lead her away to be sealed up (alive) in a tomb. Tiresias , the blind prophet, warns Creon that he is about to make a terrible mistake in killing Antigone, and that he should not leave the body of Polynices unburied. Creon flies into another rage and accuses Tiresias of false prophecy and of accepting bribes. Upset, Tiresias tells Creon that as punishment for killing Antigone, the gods will soon take the life of Creon's child. Creon is shaken by this, and eventually decides to relent. He rushes off to free Antigone from the tomb.

After Creon has left, a messenger arrives at the palace with the news that Haemon has killed himself. Eurydice , Haemon's mother and Creon's wife, asks to know what happened. The messenger says that Haemon went to Antigone and found that she had hanged herself. When Creon arrived, Haemon lunged at him with his sword, then used the weapon to kill himself. Eurydice leaves without a word. Creon returns, overcome with grief, carrying the body of his son. He cries out and blames himself for driving his son to suicide. A messenger enters with the news that Eurydice has killed herself while cursing Creon for murdering their son. Creon is left a broken man.

Antigone - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 441 BC, centering on the themes of loyalty, honor, and the consequences of defying the state’s law. Essays on Antigone could explore the character analysis, thematic explorations, its relevance in the context of political dissent, and the ethical dilemmas presented in the narrative. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Antigone you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Analysis of Antigone by Sophocles

Sophocles, one of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived, created the main character, Antigone, as a civil disobedience. The play embellishes the opposing conflicts between Antigone who stands for the values of family, and Creon who stands for the values of the state. It includes terms that are demonstrated throughout the Discovering Literature textbook. Antigone is one of the great Greek Tragedies remembered today, and it contains an important message to readers. Throughout Antigone essay, many literary […]

Gender Roles in Antigone

Essentially family, the roles of women and men, and death plays a vital role in society. Family values have certain qualities that are crucial for a family to uphold. Gender roles have differed from ancient times to currently in today's society. Unlike religious gods today, Greek gods took human form and had the same dilemmas human have in society. In a short story of Antigone, Sophocles illustrates a rage between family and what is deemed by society. Families today are […]

Leadership in Oedipus Rex

While comparing the similarities between Oedipus and Creon, they both accepted their guilt behind their actions, felt guilty for their actions and Creon would make a better position as a president for 2021. Oedipus accepts his guilt when he realizes that he murdered his father and slept with his mother and also finds Jocasta dead. Oedipus then later blinds himself from facing reality and the actual truth. 'And as this dirge went up, so did his hands strike his founts […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Reality of Interpretation between Antigone and Creon

Sophocles Antigone shows the reality of interpretation between Antigone and Creon, and other characters in the play. Antigone and Creon are similar in being stubborn but have a different understanding of reality. In the play, we see that Antigone and Creon dispute the definition of justice and power. The defender of family rights is Antigone, and her opponent is Creon who defends the idea of the power of the state. Antigone shows the conflict between the human beings as a […]

Oedipus and Antigone

Relationships are known to be about love and trust, but it seems to be a very big problem in the past. In the past for example in the stories I will be using are not just complicated between one or two people it is conflict that has happened between an entire family. When something is conflicted that means that there is a huge argument between one or even many people because they disagree with something. In my opinion it almost […]

The Role of Woman in Ancient Time

The role of woman in each of these works play a significant role in each yet they are all portrayed in different aspects. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a very old story yet still the role of women in the story is very much important. You can get the idea that it might actually not be so old since it shows that woman’s role as that of in today’s society. If you take it from the biological perspective, the females are […]

Antigone Death

It is true that life has infinite new things. In those, there are things, which cannot be counted or bought with money, that make people feel very precious and respectful. That is love. Love is mysterious in the heart. Love helps people become comfortable, happy, always approaching better personalities and the better future in life. Love is the foundation to be more stable and more attached to individuals in society. Love has many levels, but often when giving love, people […]

Antigone’s Determination in Sophocles’s Antigone

Sometimes it is hard to choose between following the law and doing what is best for your family, but Antigone has no problem with that decision. In Antigone essay examples, the Greek tragedy written by Sophocles, Antigone is the protagonist. Since both of her brothers died in the war against each other, Creon, her uncle, takes the throne. He does not believe that Polyneices should be buried, so he enforces a law to forbid it. Antigone proposes the idea to Ismene, […]

Three Traits of the Golden Age of Athens in Literature

The beginning of the Golden Age of Greece or Athens started with the Persian war, when the Persian army was defeated by Greeks. One of the main defining features of the Golden Age of Athens are that Law comes from men not the gods as we can see in the book of Antigone, another one is explaining history through the actions of people not the gods, as we can see in the book Odyssey, and the last one is focusing […]

A Character of Antigone in the Play

Antigone is a passionate Greek tragedy of conflict and suffering written by Sophocles. Its plot revolves around the illegal burial of Antigone's rebellious brother Polyneices. This essay on Antigone will zoom in to the strength and weaknesses of the main character Antigone. Antigone, is portrayed as the tragic hero who recognizes her familial obligation and responsibilities. The dialogue between her and Ismene reveals her stubbornness and loyalty to her brother. Despite the consequences, Antigone challenges Creon's decree in order to […]

Antigone as a Tragic Hero

Sophocles’ Antigone was a book that had a unique plot. One of the ideas presented in this specific play was feminism and Antigone’s determination to go against their ruler. Along with this idea occurred a number of tragedies, which means there’s also a tragic hero. There are numerous debates in determining the tragic hero in this play, between the protagonist Antigone and Creon, Antigone’s cruel uncle. Tragic heroes, in any work, is a character – not necessarily the protagonist- with […]

Antigone Themes of Laws and Cunning Contrivance

Whether one is planning out their life or not, everyone’s life is predetermined. In the Hindu religion, it is believed that one’s life is based on how they have lived in their previous lives before. This has to do with how people lived their lives before and how they treated others. In “Antigone” by Socrates everyone lives their lives based on their social class and gender. The characters in Antigone also have a destined plan of how they should live. […]

A Picture of Antigone in the Play

Sophocles' Antigone, believed to have been written around 441 B.C., explores a number of conflicts, including the of issue of gender inequality which is prevalent in the entire play. The play begins with a female protagonist entering the stage with pronounced intentions to defy the king of Thebes. This behavior from a woman was not accepted at any time in ancient Greek society. They were treated as inferior to their male partners and the inequality is seen through all of […]

Antigone Essay on Gender Roles

Gender roles are basically defined as socially constructed roles that society considers proper to men and women. Gender role plays a big role in this story and in the Greek society as well. The play, “Antigone”, determines that Haimon and Antigone challenge gender roles while Ismene perpetuates. Haimon stands up for woman and condractics societal gender roles. The quote, “The city would deny it, to a man” (Sophocles 18) states that Haimon is going against the rules of women being […]

Antigone Vs Oedipus the King Civil Disobedience

Antigone struggled between the loyalty to her brother and Creon’s decree. She wanted to give her brother a proper burial so he could have a peaceful afterlife. However, Creon demanded that no one bury Antigone’s brother. I can relate to Antigone because I have wanted to help my friend when she got herself in trouble. However, my parents said I was not allowed to contact her because she was a negative influence. I believe that Antigone has the right to […]

Antigone and MLK Compare and Contrast Essay: Unveiling the Timeless Essence of Justice Across Eras

Dive into the entwined narratives of Antigone and Martin Luther King Jr., two distinct eras yet interconnected by the tenacity of justice. Their tales, though ages apart, share a familiar chord—the relentless pursuit of what's right. Let's embark on a journey of comparison and contrast, where these two figures, separated by centuries, become our guides in exploring justice's myriad facets and how it evolves across time. Antigone's defiance against the edicts of power resounds with a fervor echoing through history. […]

Antigone and Creon: a Comparative Analysis of Moral Justice and Personal Duty

Clashing Beliefs of Antigone and Creon In Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, each character had a striking personality and powerful beliefs. The two main characters of the tragedy are Antigone and Creon. Both had strong and different ideas about what was wrong and what was right, leading to much conflict between them throughout the tragedy. The heroine, Antigone, had some of the strongest beliefs of them all. Antigone was willing to sacrifice her own life and well-being to honor her fallen brother, […]

Decoding the Authorship of Antigone: a Deep Dive into Sophocles’ Legacy

Have you ever wondered about the genius behind the timeless Greek tragedy "Antigone"? Sure, if you ask anyone familiar with Greek literature, they’ll probably throw the name Sophocles at you. But let’s be real: the story of who penned "Antigone" is more than just a straightforward credit to Sophocles. It’s a journey through the heart of ancient Greek drama, packed with layers of history and a bit of scholarly detective work. Sophocles, this guy was not just anybody. Born around […]


Playwright :	Sophocles
Chorus :	Theban Elders
Date premiered :	c. 441 BCE
Genre :	Tragedy
Place premiered :	Athens
Original language :	Ancient Greek
Characters :	Creon, Ismene, Antigone, Haemon, Eurydice of Thebes, Tiresias, Sentry, Polynices

Additional Example Essays

Gender Roles in the Great Gatsby
The short story "The Cask of Amontillado"
A Rose for Emily Setting
Analysis of "Up From Slavery" by Booker T. Washington
Is Chris McCandless a Hero?
Jane Eyre - Insider and Outsider in Society
Montag And Clarisse In The Novel Fahrenheit 451
Feminist Criticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Letter From Birmingham Jail Rhetorical Analysis
Why College Should Not Be Free
Shakespeare's Hamlet Character Analysis
A Raisin in the Sun Theme

How To Write an Essay About Antigone

Understanding the play 'antigone'.

Before diving into writing an essay about "Antigone," it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of the play. "Antigone" is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, and it deals with themes such as individual vs. state, family loyalty, and moral integrity. Familiarize yourself with the plot, characters, and the historical and cultural context in which Sophocles wrote. Understanding the play’s background, including the mythological story of Oedipus and its impact on Antigone’s life, is essential. This foundational knowledge will provide a solid base for your essay.

Choosing a Focus and Developing a Thesis

Once you have a comprehensive understanding of the play, the next step is to choose a specific focus for your essay. This could be an analysis of a particular theme, character, or a specific aspect of Sophocles' writing style. Develop a clear thesis statement that will guide the direction of your essay. Your thesis should be arguable and not merely a statement of fact. For example, you might argue how Antigone represents the conflict between personal conviction and state law. This thesis will shape your analysis and give your essay a clear direction.

Gathering Evidence from the Text

After establishing your thesis, gather evidence from the text to support your arguments. This involves close reading of "Antigone" to find quotes, dialogues, and instances in the play that align with your thesis. For instance, if you're discussing Antigone’s defiance as a form of civil disobedience, find parts of the dialogue that showcase her reasoning and moral stance. This step is critical because solid evidence from the text will strengthen your arguments and give credibility to your essay.

Analyzing and Interpreting the Text

The next part of your essay should be devoted to analyzing and interpreting the evidence you have gathered. Discuss how your selected quotes and examples support your thesis. This section should not just summarize the play but offer a deeper insight into the themes, characters, and stylistic elements of Sophocles' writing. For example, explore how Sophocles uses dramatic irony or how the character of Creon contrasts with Antigone. Your analysis should be thoughtful and demonstrate a deeper understanding of the text.

Concluding Your Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your analysis and restating your thesis in the light of the evidence and discussion provided. Your conclusion should tie all the elements of your essay together and reinforce your overall argument. It could also provide a broader comment on the significance of the play in contemporary times or its relevance in the context of Greek tragedy. A strong conclusion will leave the reader with a lasting impression of your insights into the play.

Final Touches: Review and Edit

After completing your essay, it's important to review and edit your work. Check for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your essay flows logically and that your arguments are well-supported with evidence from the text. It might also be helpful to get feedback from others, perhaps classmates or a teacher, who can provide a fresh perspective. A well-polished essay will communicate your ideas more effectively and demonstrate your understanding and analysis of "Antigone."

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

by Sophocles

Antigone essay questions.

Why does Ismene object to Antigone's plan to bury Polyneices?

Possible Answer:

Ismene believes the men who rule Thebes must not be disobeyed because men are stronger and their will must be respected.

How does Antigone demonstrate pre-feminist ethics?

Antigone believes that a woman's duty is not to the men who rule a domain, but rather to her own instincts and her own sense of right and wrong. She believes that the gods do not dictate through a ruler, but rather through individual beliefs.

When does Creon become apologetic for his actions?

Creon never apologizes for his actions. Instead, he simply orders Antigone to be freed because he knows that Teiresias is never wrong - and therefore that his own life is at risk. However, he never truly believes that his order to imprison her was the wrong course of action.

What is the seeming reason for Haemon's suicide? Does he kill himself only out of desperate love for the dead Antigone?

Haemon's suicide seems to have two motivations - first out of anguish over Antigone's death, but also because he is so furious with his father for having betrayed his trust. Early in the play, Haemon tells his father that as long as he offers wisdom, Haemon will follow him. But now it is clear that his father led him astray, and for that Haemon believes that one of them must die.

Why isn't Creon killed by the plague that befalls him at the play's end?

Creon's punishment is to suffer without a family, and to suffer the guilt of knowing he destroyed the lives of innocents to preserve obsolete traditions and a misconceived legacy of misogynist rule.

What is Creon's tragic flaw?

Creon's tragic flaw is that he believes that men have the right to interpret divine will and impose absolute power in their name. As a result, a simple belief - men cannot be wrong in the face of women - is elevated to law and thus leads to multiple (unnecessary) deaths.

Is Antigone ever apologetic for burying Polyneices?

Though Antigone bemoans her fate and believes death is a cruel and unnecessary punishment for burying Polyneices, she is never apologetic for actually covering his body. She believes until the end that she did the right thing.

Why does Antigone not allow Ismene to join her in her death sentence?

Antigone does not want her sister laying claim to an act that was solely hers for two reasons: one, because she wants her sister to remain alive, and two, because she wants her sister to feel the shame of abandoning her principles for the sake of staying alive and being subservient to men.

What is the role of the Chorus?

The Chorus is meant to reflect the conscience of Thebes - they are the elders who expect Creon to guide them towards wisdom. As they lead him astray, they begin to sense this and reflect their feelings in their choral poems.

What is unusual about the Watchman's speech?

Unlike the other characters, the Watchman's speech is written in more natural rhythms and dialect.

GradeSaver will pay $15 for your literature essays

Antigone Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Antigone is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How does the play begin?What impact does this technique or beginning have on the audience?

In her very first speech, Antigone only briefly alludes to her and her sister's circumstances, but a Greek audience would have quickly filled in the gaps created by this 'in media res' device (meaning that Sophocles begins the story 'in the middle...

demonstration of pre feminist ethics in sophocles antigone

Antigone's gender has profound effects on the meaning of her actions. Creon himself says that the need to defeat her is all the more pressing because she is a woman. The freedom of Greek women was extremely limited; the rules and strictures placed...

Whose rights should assume priority - Creon's to legislate and punish, or Antigone's to bury her brother? Is there any way to resolve the competing claims of Creon and Antigone?

I like Antigone. Some critics see Antigone as too self-righteous, even alienating, but others claim her as a seminal feminist, determined to do what is right even in defiance of patriarchal law. Indeed, Antigone captured the public imagination...

Study Guide for Antigone

Antigone study guide contains a biography of Sophocles, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Antigone
Antigone Summary
Character List
Lines 001-241 Summary and Analysis

Essays for Antigone

Antigone essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Antigone by Sophocles.

Influence of Antigone on A Doll's House
The Use of Light and Dark Images in Antigone
Batman and Creon: Denied the Glory?
Relativist Justice in Antigone
Hubris in Antigone and Oedipus

Lesson Plan for Antigone

About the Author
Common Core Standards
Introduction to Antigone
Relationship to Other Books
Notes to the Teacher
Related Links
Antigone Bibliography

E-Text of Antigone

Antigone e-text contains the full text of Antigone by Sophocles.

Wikipedia Entries for Antigone

Introduction
Historical context
Notable features
Significance and interpretation

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Antigone — Antigone Haemon Character Analysis

Antigone Haemon Character Analysis

Categories: Antigone

About this sample

Words: 693 |

Published: Jun 14, 2024

Words: 693 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Rationality, love for antigone, bibliography.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 373 words

3 pages / 1283 words

3 pages / 1356 words

3.5 pages / 1498 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Antigone

In Sophocles' tragedy "Antigone," the theme of loyalty is deeply woven into the fabric of the narrative, driving the actions and decisions of the characters. The titular character, Antigone, finds herself at the crossroads of [...]

In the tragic play Antigone by Sophocles, foreshadowing is a powerful storytelling device that not only adds depth and complexity to the plot, but also provides hints and clues about the future events in the play. [...]

The play "Antigone" by Sophocles presents a riveting confrontation between the titular character, Antigone, and Creon, the king of Thebes. This conflict is not merely a familial disagreement but a profound clash between [...]

Antigone, a play written by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, has long been a subject of debate and discussion among scholars, philosophers, and literary critics. At the heart of this debate lies the question of whether [...]

Sophocles' play Antigone centers around a conflict between oikos and polis. Oikos, "home," is the concept of the household, dominated by women and kinship; polis, "city," is the concept of the collective city-state, dominated by [...]

In Antigone, Antigone perseveres through all her hardships and decisions with her morals and set of values. Antigone throughout the play is noticed to transform from being stubborn and underestimated to courageous and [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

IMAGES

Summary Of Antigone Free Essay Example
PPT
Antigone Essay/Summary
Antigone Essay
Antigone Essay Options 1 by Chelsea Guell
Antigone: A Tragedy

VIDEO

Antigone English final
Antigone
Antigone Explained
Antigone A level Drama Revision
Antigone, the album debut
Antigone Rising & The Bangles

COMMENTS

Antigone Critical Essays
Antigone is a complex play, one that defies ready interpretation. It is a study of human actions, with complex emotions. Each character represents a moral ideal, a moral argument, and the play ...
Antigone Essay Examples: Topics, Hooks, Thesis Ideas
Essay grade: Good. 3 pages / 1645 words. In Sophocles' Antigone, Creon, the King of Thebes, is entrusted to care for Antigone and Ismene, the daughters of the deceased Theban King Oedipus. However, Creon and the strong-willed Antigone clash on the issue of the burial of Antigone and Ismene's brother Polyneices.
Analysis of Sophocles' Antigone
Analysis of Sophocles' Antigone By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 29, 2020 • ( 0). Within this single drama—in great part, a harsh critique of Athenian society and the Greek city-state in general—Sophocles tells of the eternal struggle between the state and the individual, human and natural law, and the enormous gulf between what we attempt here on earth and what fate has in store for us all.
Antigone Study Guide
The following three essays explore the play's themes and context. Sophocles' Antigone in Context by Professor Chris Carey. Greek tragedy is a remarkable fictional creation. We are used to a theatre which can embrace past and present, fictitious and historical, bizarre fantasy and mundane reality. The Athenian theatre was far more limited than this.
The Ancient Greek Tragedy "Antigone"
Get a custom essay on The Ancient Greek Tragedy "Antigone". The ancient Greek tragedy "Antigone" was written by Sophocles and narrates about a woman fighting against a royal decree that hurt her personal feelings and principles. Antigone is a girl who has crossed out her future by her act and has incurred the wrath of King Creon.
Antigone Analysis
In Antigone, the leader of the chorus is a character rather than a background figure. Antigone Study Tools Take a quiz Ask a question Start an essay
Antigone: a Heroine Meets Her Tragedy: [Essay Example], 1484 words
Expert Review. The essay provides a brief analysis of Sophocles' Antigone as a Greek tragedy where the main character is a woman. It evaluates Antigone's status as a tragic hero based on the three characteristics of a tragic hero - noble birth, goodness, and a tragic flaw. The essay is organized and has a clear focus on the topic.
Antigone
Segal, Charles Paul. "Sophocles' Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone." In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodward. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice ...
Antigone Essays
Antigone. In his play Antigone, Sophocles portrays the character of Creon in a multitude of ways but particularly as proud and uncompromising. Because he is ruler of Thebes, many of his actions drive and shape the course of the drama. Significantly, it is... 2. Antigone essays are academic essays for citation.
Antigone
Antigone was the third play in the Oedipus trilogy written by the great Greek playwright Sophocles (c. 496 - c. 406 BCE). Produced around 441 BCE and receiving first prize at the Dionysia festival, the tragedy was actually written long before both Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus.In the play, Antigone returns to Thebes after the death of her father Oedipus.
Antigone
Antigone, in Greek legend, the daughter born of the unwittingly incestuous union of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. After her father blinded himself upon discovering that Jocasta was his mother and that, also unwittingly, he had slain his father, Antigone and her sister Ismene served as Oedipus' guides, following him from Thebes into exile ...
Antigone Essay
Antigone: An Analysis Adrienne Hudspeth. Antigone: An Analysis. As the Greek tragedy Antigone builds up to a climax, Creon is warned that " [a]ll men make mistakes, it is only human. But once the wrong is done, a man can turn his back on folly, misfortune too, if he tries to make amends, however low he's fallen, and stops his bullnecked ways.
Antigone by Sophocles Plot Summary
Antigone Summary. Next. Lines 1-416. As the play begins, the invading army of Argos has been driven from Thebes, but in the course of the battle, two sons of Oedipus (Eteocles and Polynices) have died fighting for opposing sides. Their uncle, Creon, is now king of Thebes. He decrees that the body of Polynices, who fought against his native city ...
Antigone Essays and Criticism
Source: George Eliot, "The Antigone and its Moral" (1856), in her Essays of George Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney, Routledge, and Kegan Pau, 1963, pp. 261-65. Eliot was an English novelist ...
Antigone Essay
Antigone as a Tragic Hero. It is not often in Greek myth or tragedy that a woman is found portrayed as a tragic hero. However, Sophocles makes the hero of his Antigone, the third and last play in the theme of Oedipus' life, a woman. And though this is out of context for a Greek play, it is still considered one of the greatest Greek tragedies ...
An Analysis of Power, Authority and Truth in Antigone, a Play by
This essay provides a clear focus on analyzing the power dynamics between Kreon and Antigone in the play Antigone by Sophocles. The overall organization of the essay is easy to follow and each paragraph has a clear topic sentence.
Antigone Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas
18 essay samples found. Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 441 BC, centering on the themes of loyalty, honor, and the consequences of defying the state's law. Essays on Antigone could explore the character analysis, thematic explorations, its relevance in the context of political dissent, and the ethical dilemmas ...
Antigone Essay Questions
Antigone essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Antigone by Sophocles. Influence of Antigone on A Doll's House; The Use of Light and Dark Images in Antigone; Batman and Creon: Denied the Glory? Relativist Justice in Antigone; Hubris in Antigone and Oedipus; View ...
What is a good thesis statement for an essay about Sophocles' play
A defensible thesis statement could be: Antigone is a proto-feminist heroine whose execution in a male-dominated culture was inevitable. Ismene is conventional, obedient to authority, and ...
Antigone Haemon Character Analysis: [Essay Example], 693 words
Antigone, a play by Sophocles, explores the conflict between individual conscience and the laws of the state. The character of Haemon, the son of King Creon and Antigone's fiancé, provides an intriguing perspective on this clash. Haemon's character traits are central to understanding his role in the play and the implications of his actions.

Literary Theory and Criticism

Analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone

Share this:

Related Articles

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Antigone Study Guide

Sophocles' Antigone in Context by Professor Chris Carey

Antigone and Creon in Conflict by Dr. Dimitra Kokkini

Conflict and Contrast in Sophocles' Antigone by Dr. Tom Mackenzie

Suggested Reading and Further Resources

The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone” Essay

The Myth & Characters

Bibliography

About the Author

Translations

Related Content

Oedipus at Colonus

Oedipus the King

Seven Against Thebes

Ancient Greek Literature

Ancient Greek Tragedy

Recommended Books

Cite This Work

Chicago Style

License & Copyright

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Antigone - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Analysis of Antigone by Sophocles

Gender Roles in Antigone

Leadership in Oedipus Rex

Reality of Interpretation between Antigone and Creon

Oedipus and Antigone

The Role of Woman in Ancient Time

Antigone Death

Antigone’s Determination in Sophocles’s Antigone

Three Traits of the Golden Age of Athens in Literature

A Character of Antigone in the Play

Antigone as a Tragic Hero

Antigone Themes of Laws and Cunning Contrivance

A Picture of Antigone in the Play

Antigone Essay on Gender Roles

Antigone Vs Oedipus the King Civil Disobedience

Antigone and MLK Compare and Contrast Essay: Unveiling the Timeless Essence of Justice Across Eras

Antigone and Creon: a Comparative Analysis of Moral Justice and Personal Duty

Decoding the Authorship of Antigone: a Deep Dive into Sophocles’ Legacy

Additional Example Essays

How To Write an Essay About Antigone

Choosing a Focus and Developing a Thesis

Gathering Evidence from the Text

Analyzing and Interpreting the Text

Concluding Your Essay

Final Touches: Review and Edit

by Sophocles

Antigone Questions and Answers

Study Guide for Antigone

Essays for Antigone

Lesson Plan for Antigone

E-Text of Antigone

Wikipedia Entries for Antigone

Antigone Haemon Character Analysis

Table of contents

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Antigone

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS