Tama Brendaline Emanuel
February 17,2019 TR 4PM
ANTIGONE: FAMILY RELIGION, INDIVIDUAL
The play begins with Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, communicating her present
conflict to her sister, Ismene. Their brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, had just fought against
each other in a war that claimed both of their lives. Eteocles had fought in the defense of Thebes
and was so awarded an honorable burial. While, Polyneices came back to fight for the throne of
Thebes after being banished and so his corpse was declared to rot in the streets in unburied
shame and anyone who attempted to give him a proper burial will be stoned to death. This was
the ruling of the new king of Thebes, Creon, Antigone's uncle. Unlike her uncle who stood for
the public, civic, and social concerns in which a government has a right to assert its authority and
demand loyalty from its citizens, Antigone stood for the rights of the individual to live by their
own family, religious, and personal values. It was this believe that led her on the quest to give a
proper burial to her brother despite the fact it was against the law and could ultimately cost her.
her life.
Although she is aware of the many flaws of her bloodline, which she states at the beginning of
the play, Antigone remains family oriented. She tells her sister, "I will do my part, and thine if
thou wilt not, to a brother. False to him I will never be found." and "I will not urge thee, no nor,
if thou yet shouldst have the mind, wouldst thou be welcome as a worker with me. Nay be what
thou wilt; but I will bury him: well for me to die in doing that. I shall rest, a loved one with him
whom I have loved, sinless in my crime; for I owe longer allegiance to the dead than to the
living." This shows that although she is aware of the inevitable consequences of her actions, the
love she possesses for and loyalty she has towards her family, along with her strong-willed
nature allows her to set forth with her plan even without the help of her sister.
The play's protagonist, Antigone, was not concerned with the laws of man as dictated by Creon
"Nay, he hath no right to keep me from mine own." But rather she thinks that authority lies with
the Gods and holds the divine laws as sacred. In her conversation with Creon she makes mention
of her religious upholding by saying "Yes; for it was not Zeus that had published me that edict;
not such are the laws set among men by the justice who dwells with the gods below; nor deemed
I that thy decrees were of such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing
statutes of heaven. For their life is not of today or yesterday, but from all time, and no man
knows when they were first put forth."
Antigone