by Chris Alexion, Copyright October 06, 2006, all rights reserved. 602 views
In the Greek play Antigone, Sophocles paints a person-against-person conflict that introduces and highlights the drama's real tension of person against fate or circumstances. Kreon confronts Antigone about her refusal to obey a state law, precipitating a showdown that for both sides involves principles of the highest importance and reveals the true natures of Kreon and Antigone.
The conflict occurs in post-battle Thebes. The city had been attacked by one of Oedipus's sons, but Theban forces, led by Oedipus's other son, carried the day. In the battle, both brothers were slain, and Kreon (now king of Thebes) ordered the ritual burial of Eteokles, who had defended the city, and left Polyneices' body unburied, forbidding anyone else to bury the body by a royal edict.
For Kreon, obedience to this law is essential, for to disobey is to threaten the state, and to threaten the state is to hazard the safety of everyone in it: "For the state is safety. / When she is steady, then we can steer. / Then we can love. / Those are my principles. The state will thrive through them. / … I shall honor the friends of the state / while they live, and when they die" (Antigone 27-46). Yet Antigone feels just as compelled to resist the law, telling Kreon, "No, I do not suffer from the fact of death. / But if I had let my own brother stay unburied / I would have suffered all the pain I do not feel now. / And if you decide what I did was foolish, / you may be fool enough to convict me too" (Ant. 571-575).
Antigone's crisis is multifaceted. It's first of all an ethical crisis. Faced with the choice of whether to bury the disfavored brother, Antigone holds that it is right because of the bonds of blood and of the womb. If her husband had died, she says, she might have another; she could bear more children if she lost a son. But since her parents are dead, she can never have another brother; hence she must honor Polyneices (Ant. 1057-1066). Kreon, on the other hand, considers her act wrong: "Rebellion to think of it, / Then to do it and do it again, / now more defiance, bragging about it, / she did it and she's laughing" (Ant. 584-588).
For Kreon, the crisis is also a leadership crisis. As quoted above, Kreon views the state as a place of security; he views disobedience to the law as an affront to all of civil society as well as to him–as the incarnation of civil leadership–personally: "I'm no man," he says, "She is a man, she's the king– / if she gets away with this" (Ant. 589-591).
Sophocles' plot reveals the mettle of both Kreon and Antigone. For Antigone, this is a revelation of fearlessness in both good and bad senses. Antigone is courageous, but her courage carries with it a certain lack of proper fear one ought to have in these matters. Melville's Mr. Starbuck said he would have no man in his boat who was not afraid of a whale; he realized that courage is control of an existent (and natural) feeling of fear. It is this natural feeling that Antigone seems to lack. She faces death with a sort of cold carelessness:
Then why are you waiting?
There is nothing you can say I would like to hear,
And there never could be.
And obviously there is nothing about me that could please you either. . . .
No, they [the other councilors] keep silent to please you.
Why should I be ashamed of loyalty to my brother? (Ant. 607-624)
Antigone's final suicide is difficult to understand. She probably viewed her act as courageous or loyal, but onlookers would probably interpret it as a sign that she could not bear her punishment.
As for Kreon, the crisis reveals his core instability. He is a man who appears to have everything together, but who has no fixed reference point; when things begin to fall apart, he falls apart as well. He feels his status as political leader threatened, and as a result forbids his son Haimon to marry Antigone (the two had been engaged), thus alienating him and failing as a family leader (Ant. 923). When his son and wife commit suicide in anger against him, Kreon's ruin is complete. The Chorus interpolates that Kreon has "lost everything. / For indeed when men have forfeited their pleasures, they are not alive, but the living dead" (Ant. 1338-1340). Kreon himself bewails his state, saying, "Why don't you hack me down? / Has someone a sword? / I and grief are blended. I am grief. / . . . I'm nobody. I'm nothing" (Ant. 1500-1502, 1510). Kreon had proved the fulcrum in Oedipus Rex; he was the stable point around which the story seemed to move. In Antigone he falls apart, leaving the reader with a difficult choice between sorrow and criticism.
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