Antigone †Strong and Powerful or Spoiled and Stubborn? Essay -- Antig

Antigone Strong and Powerful or Spoiled and Stubborn?Of the tragic figures in Antigone, Creon is the most obviously fiendish because his motives are self-serving and his fate the worst. As the play begins, we learn that Antigone has defied Creons royal decree by performing sacred burial rites for her exiled brother, Polyneices. Polyneices has been say an enemy of the state by Creon. The sentence for anyone attempting to bury him is death by stoning. Creon has become King of Thebes by default, as a result of Oedipus fate as previously predicted by the Oracle at Delphi Oedipus murders his father and unknowingly marries his mother. Jocaste, his mother and wife and Creons sister, commits suicide upon learning the truth. Between Oedipus two sons, Creon sides with Etocles in his claim for Oedipus throne and exiles Polyneices. Polyneices, in exile, raises an phalanx against Thebes, attempting to seize the throne for himself. The two brothers fight and slay one another. Etocles is award ed an honorable burial by Creon for bravely defending the city, but Polyneices is denied any burial because of his cultivate of treason. Denial of a ritual burial was damming and nearly sacrilegious to the ancient Greeks. Creon is enraged to discover his decree has been disobeyed. When he learns it is Antigone, his niece, he asks her if she has heard the decree. She says yes, that the decree was declared publicly and openly -- she answers that she understands the consequences. Creon further asks Antigone if she is blatantly defying him. She replies that she is answering and obeying a higher law. Creon condemns her, and in doing so violates the unspoken law of loyalty to the family. Creons will be do Creon Do you want me to show m... ...th her death. Chorus You has passed beyond human daring and come at last Into a place of stone where justice sits. I cannot tell What shape your fathers guilt appears in this. Antigone You have touched it at last the bridal bed Unspeakable, horror of son and mother mingling Their crime, contagion of all our family Your marriage strikes from the grace to murder mine. I have been a stranger here in my own land All my life The curse of my birth has followed me. (Sophocles 4,33-44). Perhaps this self-sentencing is her noble moral cause, or the very extreme of evil indulgence in self-pity and stupidity self absorption at the uplifted loss of human life, including her own. Maybe shes just spoiled and stubborn. Works CitedSophocles. Antigone Trans. Robert Fagles. New York Penguin Classics, 1984.