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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: Introduction

Antigone: plot summary, antigone: detailed summary & analysis, antigone: themes, antigone: quotes, antigone: characters, antigone: symbols, antigone: theme wheel, brief biography of sophocles.

Historical Context of Antigone

Other books related to antigone.

Full Title: Antigone
When Written: Circa 442 B.C.E.
Where Written: Athens, Greece
Literary Period: Classical
Genre: Tragic drama
Setting: The royal house of Thebes
Climax: The suicides of Antigone and Haemon
Antagonist: Creon

Extra Credit for Antigone

World War II Antigone: In 1944, when Paris was occupied by the Nazis, Jean Anouilh produced a version of Antigone in which the audience was able to identify Antigone with the French Resistance fighters and Creon with the occupying forces.

World War II Antigone 2: The German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht produced a version of the play in German, in 1948, which had even more obvious references to the Nazis. Brecht's version of the play begins in a Berlin air-raid shelter.

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Department of Greek & Latin

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?

Antigone: a Heroine Meets Her Tragedy

Categories: Antigone Antigone Tragic Hero Sophocles

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Published: Jun 29, 2018

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Related Essays on Antigone

Throughout Sophocles' play Antigone, the character of Haemon, the son of King Creon, serves as a crucial element in the tragic narrative. Haemon's love for Antigone, his betrothed, and his attempt to reason with his father, [...]

Sophocles' play "Antigone" dives into the clash between personal beliefs and state laws. Haemon, who is King Creon's son and Antigone's fiancé, offers a fascinating view on this conflict. His traits are key to understanding his [...]

Antigone, one of the most famous plays by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, tells the story of a young woman who goes against the king's orders to bury her brother, who died fighting against their own city. Antigone's [...]

Verbal irony, a rhetorical device that involves saying one thing and meaning the opposite, is a prominent element in Sophocles' tragedy Antigone. Throughout the play, characters use verbal irony to convey their true feelings, [...]

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 [...]

Sophocles's Theban plays tell the story of families afflicted by generations of personal tragedy. Unlike epics such as the Iliad, whose portrayals of whole-scale war, death, and destruction convey a sense of near-apocalyptic [...]

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The Ancient Greek Tragedy “Antigone” Essay

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.

Mythology. Dogon: The First Words
"Oedipus Rex": The Gods’ Role in Human Affairs
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)

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1. In Scene 3, Antigone and Kreon argue their points about the burial, alluding to a much larger thematic discussion on God and Man’s Law .

Do these characters agree or disagree on which category of law is more important to follow? ( topic sentence )
Based on your above answer, provide examples for each character.
Based on the ending of the play, which law does Sophocles appear to regard as superior?

2. The Chorus, a constant presence in the play, repeatedly returns to the theme of Fate and its Inescapability .

What is the Chorus’s general position regarding fate? ( topic sentence )
Identify three examples in which the Chorus references the fate and destiny of a character.
Is there another character that frequently mentions fate, other than the Chorus?

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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.

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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

V. G. Belinsky 1847

Letter to N. V. Gogol [1]

Written : July 3, 1847; Source : V.G. Belinsky: Selected Philosophical Works Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1948; Transcribed : Harrison Fluss for marxists.org, February 2008.

You are only partly right in regarding my article as that of an angered man: that epithet is too mild and inadequate to express the state to which I was reduced on reading your book. But you are entirely wrong in ascribing that state to your indeed none too flattering references to the admirers of your talent. No, there was a more important reason for this. One could endure an outraged sense of self-esteem, and I should have had sense enough to let the matter pass in silence were that the whole gist of the matter; but one cannot endure an outraged sense of truth and human dignity; one cannot keep silent when lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under the guise of religion and the protection of the knout.

Yes, I loved you with all the passion with which a man, bound by ties of blood to his native country, can love its hope, its honor, its glory, one of its great leaders on the path toward consciousness, development, and progress. And you had sound reason for losing your equanimity at least momentarily when you forfeited that love. I say that not because I believe my love to be an adequate reward for a great talent, but because I do not represent a single person in this respect but a multitude of men, most of whom neither you nor I have ever set eyes on, and who, in their turn, have never set eyes on you. I find myself at a loss to give you an adequate idea of the indignation your book has aroused in all noble hearts, and of the wild shouts of joy that were set up on its appearance by all your enemies, both the nonliterary – the Chichikovs, the Nozdrevs, and the mayors...and by the literary, whose names are well known to you. You see yourself that even those people who are of one mind with your book have disowned it. Even if it had been written as a result of deep and sincere conviction, it could not have created any impression on the public other than the one it did. And it is nobody’s fault but your own if everyone (except the few who must be seen and known in order not to derive pleasure from their approval) received it as an ingenious but all too unceremonious artifice for achieving a purely earthly aim by celestial means. Nor is that in any way surprising; what is surprising is that you find it surprising. I believe that is so because your profound knowledge of Russia is only that of an artist, but not of a thinker, whose role you have so ineffectually tried to play in your fantastic book. Not that you are not a thinker, but that you have been accustomed for so many years to look at Russia from your beautiful far-away ; [2] and who does not know that there is nothing easier than seeing things from a distance the way we want to see them; for in that beautiful far-away you live a life that is entirely alien to it; you live in and within yourself or within a circle of the same mentality as your own that is powerless to resist your influence on it. Therefore you failed to realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse; she needs rights and laws conforming not to the preaching of the church but to common sense and justice, and their strictest possible observance. Instead of which she presents the dire spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without even having the excuse so insidiously exploited by the American plantation owners who claim that the Negro is not a man; a country where people call themselves not by names but by nicknames such as Vanka, Vaska, Steshka, Palashka; a country where there are not only no guarantees for individuality, honor and property, but even no police order, and where there is nothing but vast corporations of official thieves and robbers of various descriptions. The most vital national problems in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment and the strictest possible observance of at least those laws that already exist. This is even realized by the government itself (which is well aware of how the landowners treat their peasants and how many of the former are annually done away with by the latter), as is proved by its timid and abortive half-measures for the relief of the white Negroes and the comical substitution of the single-lash knout by a cat-o-three tails. [3]

Such are the problems that prey on the mind of Russia in her apathetic slumber! And at such a time a great writer, whose astonishingly artistic and deeply truthful works have so powerfully contributed toward Russia’s awareness of herself, enabling her as they did to take a look at herself as though in a mirror – publishes a book in which he teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out of the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and Church....And would you expect me not to become indignant?... Why, if you had made an attempt on my life I could not have hated you more than I do for these disgraceful lines.... And after this, you expect people to believe the sincerity of your book’s intent! No! Had you really been inspired by the truth of Christ and not by the teaching of the devil you would certainly have written something entirely different in your new book. You would have told the landowner that since his peasants are his brethren in Christ, and since a brother cannot be a slave to his brother, he should either give them their freedom or, at least, allow them to enjoy the fruits of their own labor to their greatest possible benefit, realizing, as he does, in the depths of his own conscience, the false relationship in which he stands toward them.

And the expression “ Oh, you unwashed snout, you! ” From what Nozdrev and Sobakevich did you overhear it, in order to present it to the world as a great discovery for the edification and benefit of the peasants, whose only reason for not washing is that they have let themselves be persuaded by their masters that they are not human beings? And your conception of the national Russian system of trial and punishment, whose ideal you have found in the foolish saying that both the guilty and innocent should be flogged alike? [4] That, indeed, is often the case with us, though more often than not it is the man who is in the right who takes the punishment, unless he can ransom himself, and for such occasions another proverb says: guiltlessly guilty! And such a book is supposed to have been the result of an arduous inner process, a lofty spiritual enlightenment! Impossible! Either you are ill – and you must hasten to take a cure, or...I am afraid to put my thought into words! ...

Proponent of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals – what are you about! Look beneath your feet – you are standing on the brink of an abyss!... That you base such teaching on the Orthodox Church I can understand: it has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it? What have you found in common between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church? He was the first to bring to people the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and to set the seal of truth to that teaching by martyrdom. And this teaching was men’s salvation only until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of Orthodoxy for its foundation. The Church, on the other hand, was a hierarchy, consequently a champion of inequality, a flatterer of authority, an enemy and persecutor of brotherhood among men – and so it has remained to this day. But the meaning of Christ’s message has been revealed by the philosophical movement of the preceding century. And that is why a man like Voltaire who stamped out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe by ridicule, is, of course, more the son of Christ, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs – Eastern or Western. Do you really mean to say you do not know that! Now it is not even a novelty to a schoolboy...Hence, can it be that you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, have in all sincerity, from the bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious Russian clergy whom you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy? Let us assume that you do not know that the latter had once been something, while the former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the secular powers; but do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian people? About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories? Of the priest, the priest’s wife, the priest’s daughter, and the priest’s farm hand. Does not the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of gluttony, avarice, servility, and shamelessness for all Russians? Do you mean to say that you do not know all this? Strange! According to you the Russian people is the most religious in the world. That is a lie! The basis of religiousness is pietism, reverence, fear of God. Whereas the Russian man utters the name of the Lord while scratching himself somewhere. He says of the icon: If it works, pray to it; if it doesn ’t , it ’s good for covering pots.

Take a closer look and you will see that it is by nature a profoundly atheistic people. It still retains a good deal of superstition, but not a trace of religiousness. Superstition passes with the advances of civilization, but religiousness often keeps company with them too; we have a living example of this in France, where even today there are many sincere Catholics among enlightened and educated men, and where many people who have rejected Christianity still cling stubbornly to some sort of god. The Russian people is different; mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it has too much common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein, perhaps, lies the vastness of its historic destinies in the future. Religiousness has not even taken root among the clergy in it, since a few isolated and exceptional personalities distinguished for such cold ascetic contemplation prove nothing. But the majority of our clergy has always been distinguished for their fat bellies, scholastic pedantry, and savage ignorance. It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism; instead it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of faith. Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects who formed such a contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were numerically so insignificant in comparison with it.

I shall not expatiate on your panegyric to the affectionate relations existing between the Russian people and its lords and masters. I shall say point-blank that panegyric has met sympathy nowhere and has lowered you even in the eyes of people who in other respects are very close to you in their views. As far as I am concerned, I leave it to your conscience to admire the divine beauty of the autocracy (it is both safe and profitable), but continue to admire it judiciously from your beautiful far-away: at close quarters it is not so attractive, and not so safe....I would remark but this: when a European, especially a Catholic, is seized with religious ardor he becomes a denouncer of iniquitous authority, similar to the Hebrew prophets who denounced the iniquities of the great ones of the earth. We do quite the contrary: no sooner is a person (even a reputable person) afflicted with the malady that is known to psychiatrists as religiosa mania than he begins to burn more incense to the earthly god than to the heavenly one, and so overshoots the mark in doing so that the former would fain reward him for his slavish zeal did he not perceive that he would thereby be compromising himself in society’s eyes.... What a rogue our fellow the Russian is!...

Another thing I remember you saying in your book, claiming it to be a great and incontrovertible truth, is that literacy is not merely useless but positively harmful to the common people. What can I say to this? May your Byzantine God forgive you that Byzantine thought, unless, in committing it to paper, you knew not what you were saying...But perhaps you will say: “Assuming that I have erred and that all my ideas are false, but why should I be denied the right to err and why should people doubt the sincerity of my errors?” Because, I would say in reply, such a tendency has long ceased to be a novelty in Russia. Not so very long ago it was drained to the lees by Burachok [an advocate of “official nationality"] and his fraternity. Of course, your book shows a good deal more intellect and talent (though neither of these elements is very richly represented) than their works; but then they have developed your common doctrine with greater energy and greater consistence; they have boldly reached its ultimate conclusions, have rendered all to the Byzantine God and left nothing for Satan; whereas you, wanting to light a taper to each of them, have fallen into contradiction, upholding, for example, Pushkin, literature, and the theater, all of which, in your opinion, if you were only conscientious enough to be consistent, can in no way serve the salvation of the soul but can do a lot toward its damnation...Whose head could have digested the idea of Gogol’s identity with Burachok? You have placed yourself too high in the regard of the Russian public for it to be able to believe you sincere in such convictions. What seems natural in fools cannot seem so in a man of genius. Some people have been inclined to regard your book as the result of mental derangement verging on sheer madness. But they soon rejected such a supposition, for clearly that book was not written in a single day or week or month, but very likely in one, two, or three years; it shows coherence; through its careless exposition one glimpses premeditation, and the hymn to the powers-that-be nicely arranges the earthly affairs of the devout author. That is why a rumor has been current in St. Petersburg to the effect that you have written this book with the aim of securing a position as tutor to the son of the heir apparent. Before that, your letter to [Minister of Education] Uvarov became known in St. Petersburg, wherein you say that you are grieved to find that your works about Russia are misinterpreted; then you evince dissatisfaction with your previous works and declare that you will be pleased with your own works only when the Tsar is pleased with them. Now judge for yourself. Is it to be wondered at that your book has lowered you in the eyes of the public both as a writer and still more as a man?...

You, as far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public. Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression; but weighed down by heavy oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness, and apathy. Only literature, despite the Tartar censorship, shows signs of life and progressive movement. That is why the title of writer is held in such esteem among us; that is why literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little talent. The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of epaulets and gaudy uniforms. And that especially explains why every so-called liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by universal notice, and why the popularity of great talents that sincerely or insincerely give themselves to the service of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality declines so quickly. A striking example is Pushkin who had merely to write two of three verses in a loyal strain and don the kammer-iunker ’s livery to forfeit popular affection immediately! And you are greatly mistaken if you believe in all earnest that your book has come to grief not because of its bad trend, but because of the harsh truths alleged to have been expressed by you about all and sundry. Assuming you could think that of the writing fraternity, but then how do you account for the public? Did you tell it less bitter home truths less harshly and with less truth and talent in The Inspector General and Dead Souls? Indeed, the old school was worked up to a furious pitch of anger against you, but The Inspector General and Dead Souls were not affected by it, whereas your latest book has been an utter and disgraceful failure. And here the public is right, for it looks upon Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and saviors against Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, and therefore, while always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, will never forgive him a pernicious book. This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition, albeit still in embryo, is latent in our society, and this likewise proves that it has a future. If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the failure of your book!...

I would tell you, not without a certain feeling of self-satisfaction, that I believe I know the Russian public a little. Your book alarmed me by the possibility of its exercising a bad influence on the government and the censorship, but not on the public. When it was rumored in St. Petersburg that the government intended to publish your book in many thousands of copies and to sell it at an extremely low price, my friends grew despondent; but I told them then and there that the book, despite everything, would have no success and that it would soon be forgotten. In fact it is now better remembered for the articles that have been written about it than for the book itself. Yes, the Russian has a deep, though still undeveloped, instinct for truth.

Your conversion may conceivably have been sincere, but your idea of bringing it to the notice of the public was a most unhappy one. The days of naive piety have long since passed, even in our society. It already understands that it makes no difference where one prays and that the only people who seek Christ and Jerusalem [5] are those who have never carried Him in their breasts or who have lost Him. He who is capable of suffering at the sight of other people’s sufferings and who is pained at the sight of other people’s oppression bears Christ within his bosom and has no need to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The humility you preach is, first of all, not novel, and, second, it savors on the one hand of prodigious pride, and on the other of the most shameful degradation of one’s human dignity. The idea of becoming a sort of abstract perfection, of rising above everyone else in humility, is the fruit of either pride or imbecility, and in either case leads inevitably to hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, and incomprehensibility. Moreover, in your book you have taken the liberty of expressing yourself with gross cynicism not only of other people (that would be merely impolite) but of yourself -- and that is vile, for if a man who strikes his neighbor on the cheek evokes indignation, the sight of a man striking himself on the cheek evokes contempt. No, you are not illuminated; you are simply beclouded; you have failed to grasp either the spirit or the form of Christianity of our time. Your book breathes not the true Christian teaching but the morbid fear of death, of the devil and of hell!

And what language, what phrases! “Every man hath now become trash and a rag” -do you really believe that in saying hath instead of has you are expressing yourself biblically? How eminently true it is that when a man gives himself wholly up to lies, intelligence and talent desert him. If this book did not bear your name, who would have thought that this turgid and squalid bombast was the work of the author of Inspector General and Dead Souls ?

As far as I myself am concerned, I repeat: You are mistaken in taking my article to be an expression of vexation at your comment on me as one of your critics. Were this the only thing to make me angry I would have reacted with annoyance to it alone and would have dealt with all the rest with unruffled impartiality. But it is true that your criticism of your admirers is doubly bad. I understand the necessity of sometimes having to rap a silly man whose praises and ecstasies make the object of his worship look ridiculous, but even this is a painful necessity, since, humanly speaking, it is somehow awkward to reward even false affection with enmity. But you had in view men who, though not brilliantly clever, are not quite fools. These people, in their admiration of your works, have probably uttered more ejaculations than talked sense about them; still, their enthusiastic attitude toward you springs from such a pure and noble source that you ought not to have betrayed them completely to your common enemies and accused them, into the bargain, of wanting to misinterpret your works. [6] You, of course, did that while carried away by the main idea of your book and through indiscretion, while Viazemskii, that prince in aristocracy and helot in literature, developed your idea and printed a denunciation against your admirers (and consequently mostly against me). [7] He probably did this to show his gratitude to you for having exalted him, the poetaster, to the rank of great poet, if I remember rightly for his “pithless, dragging verse.” [8] That is all very bad. That you were merely biding your time in order to give the admirers of your talent their due as well (after having given it with proud humility to your enemies)- I was not aware; I could not, and, I must confess, did not want to know it. It was your book that lay before me and not your intentions: I read and reread it a hundred times, but I found nothing in it that was not there, and what was there deeply offended and incensed my soul.

Were I to give free rein to my feelings this letter would probably grow into a voluminous notebook. I never thought of writing you on this subject, though I longed to do so and though you gave all and sundry printed permission to write you without ceremony with an eye to the truth alone. [9] Were I in Russia I would not be able to do it, for the local “Shpekins” open other people’s letters not merely for their own pleasure but as a matter of official duty, for the sake of informing. This summer incipient consumption has driven me abroad, [and Nekrasov has forwarded me your letter to Salzbrunn, which I am leaving today with Annenkov for Paris via Frankfort-on-Main]. [10] The unexpected receipt of your letter has enabled me to unburden my soul of what has accumulated there against you on account of your book. I cannot express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in my nature. Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions. I shall be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not repent what I have told you. This is not a question of your or my personality; it concerns a matter that is of greater importance than myself or even you; it is a matter that concerns the truth, Russian society, Russia. And this is my last concluding word: If you have had the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your truly great works, you should now disown with sincere humility your last book, and atone for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that would be reminiscent of your old ones.

Salzbrunn, July 15, 1847.

1. The publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence, with Friends was not a complete surprise for Belinsky. Six months before Gogol had published in the Sovremennik, Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Mosk-vityanin an article entitled Odyssey, which was later embodied as a separate chapter in Selected Passages. Belinsky claimed that this article, by its paradoxicalness and “high-flown pretensions to prophetic tone,” distressed “all the friends and admirers of Gogol’s talent and gladdened all his enemies.” Following this article Gogol published a second edition of Dead Souls with a foreword which filled Belinsky with “keen apprehensions regarding the future reputation... of the author of Inspector General and Dead Souls. ” In his review on this second edition Belinsky said that among the most important defects of the poem were those passages in which “the author tries to rise from a poet and artist to an oracle and descends instead to a somewhat turgid and pompous lyricism.” Belinsky, however, reconciled himself with these defects, since such passages were few in the poem and “they can be omitted in reading without diminishing the pleasure which the novel itself affords.” Of much greater importance was the fact that “these mystico-lyrical sallies in Dead Souls were not simple and accidental errors on the part of the author, but the germ of the perhaps utter deterioration of his talent and its loss for Russian literature.”

Thus, Belinsky was prepared for the Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Their publication nevertheless profoundly shocked him. In a big article dealing with this publication Belinsky, for reasons of censorship, was able to give no more than a mild expression of the indignation which the appearance of this “vile” book aroused in him. In a letter to V. P. Botkin, who had disapproved of his article, Belinsky wrote: “I am... obliged to act against my nature and character: Nature has condemned me to bark like a dog and howl like a jackal but circumstances compel me to mew like a cat and wave my tail like a fox. You say that the article is ‘written without sufficient premeditation and straight from the shoulder, whereas the matter should have been handled with subtlety.’ My dear friend, but my article, on the contrary, could never have done justice to such an important theme (albeit of negative importance) as the book it deals with precisely because I premeditated it. How little you know me! All my best articles are unpremeditated, just improvizations; in sitting down to them I never knew what I was going to write...The article on Gogol’s vile book might have turned out to be a splendid one had I been able to shut my eyes and let myself go to the full range of my indignation and fury...But I had premeditated this article, and I knew beforehand that it would not be brilliant, for I merely struggled to make it business-like and to show the baseness of an infamous wretch. And such it has come from under my pen, and not in the way you have read it. You people live in the country and know nothing. The effect of this book was such that Nikitenko, who passed it, deleted some of my quotations from the book, and trembled for those he h ad left in my article. At least a third of my own copy was deleted...You reproach me for having lost my temper. But I did not try to keep it. Tolerance to error I can well understand and appreciate, at least in others if not in myself, but tolerance to villainy I will not stand. You have utterly failed to understand this book if you regard it only as an error and do not see it as studied villainy besides, Gogol is not at all K. S. Aksakov. It is Talleyrand, Cardinal Fesch, who deceived God all his life and fooled Satan at his death.”

Belinsky’s article, such as it appeared, created a strong impression on Gogol, though he failed to grasp its import. It struck him that Belinsky was angered with him only because he took personal exception to the attacks against the critics and journalists scattered throughout the Correspondence. In this connection Gogol wrote to Prokopovich on June 20, 1847: “This irritation grieves me very much.... Please have a talk with Belinsky and let me know in what frame of mind he now is with regard to me. If his bile is stirred up let him vent it against me in the Sovremennik in whatever terms he pleases, but let him not harbour it in his breast against me. If his wrath has abated give him the enclosed epistle.” Prokopovich handed over the “epistle” to the editorial office of the Sovremennik, and N. A. Nekrasov forwarded it on to Salzbrunn where Belinsky was then sojourning. Gogol, inter alia, wrote Belinsky: “I was grieved to read your article about me in the 2nd issue of the Sovremennik. Not that I deplored the degradation in which you wanted to place me before everyone, but because it betrays the voice of a man who is angry with me. And I would not like to make even a man who did not like me angry with me, still less you, of whom I had always thought as of a man who loved me. I had no intention of causing you distress in a single place of my book. How it has happened that I have roused the anger of every single man in Russia I cannot for the time being understand.” After scanning Gogol’s letter, Belinsky, in the words of P. V. Annenkov, flushed and murmured: “Ah, he does not understand why people are angry with him – he must have that explained to him – I shall answer him.” Three days later his reply was ready. Belinsky read it to P. V. Annenkov. The latter, writing of the impression which this reply made on him, said: “I was alarmed both by the tone and tenor of this reply, and, of course, not for Belinsky’s sake, since no special consequences of foreign correspondence among acquaintances could have been anticipated at the time. I was alarmed for Gogol’s sake, who was to have received this reply, and I could vividly imagine his position the minute he began to read this scathing indictment. The letter did not merely contain a denunciation of his views and opinions; the letter revealed the emptiness and ugliness of all Gogol’s ideals, of all his conceptions of goodness and honour, of all the moral principles of his life, together with the egregious position of those circles whose defender he professed himself to be. I wanted to explain to Belinsky the whole scope of his passionate speech, but he knew that, it appears, better than I, ‘But what else was to be done’.-” he said. ‘All measures should be taken to protect people against a rabid man, even though it were Homer himself. As for insulting Gogol, I could never insult him as he has insulted me in my soul and in my faith in him.’ “ A. I. Herzen, to whom Belinsky read his letter to Gogol, told Annenkov: “It is a work of genius – and, I believe, his testament as well.” This letter to Gogol, which was “the epitome of Belinsky’s literary activity,” Lenin considered to be “one of the finest works of the uncensored democratic press, which has preserved its great and vital importance to this day.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russian edition, Vol. XVII, p. 341.) In this letter Belinsky not only subjected Gogol’s reactionary book to devastating criticism, he exposed the entire feudal and autocratic system of Russia, and only death saved him from severe punishment for this remarkable document. The superintendent of the Third Section, L. V. Dubelt, “regretted” that he was not able to make the great critic “rot in prison. It is known that the Russian writer Dostoyevsky was condemned to death, the sentence later being commuted to penal servitude, for having read Belinsky’s letter in a circle of Petrashevsky adherents. The government’s cruel reprisals, however, could do nothing to prevent Belinsky’s letter from being circulated in thousands of copies. I. S. Aksakov wrote to his father on October 9, 1856, i.e., nine odd years after Belinsky’s letter first appeared: “I have travelled much about Russia: the name of Belinsky is known to every youth who is at’ all given to thinking, to everyone who longs for a breath of fresh air amid the stinking quagmire of provincial life. There is not a single high-school teacher in the gubernia towns who does not know Belinsky’s letter to Gogol by heart.”

Belinsky’s famous letter was first published by A. I. Herzen in The Polar Star in 1855 (2nd ed., London, 1858, pp. 66-76), from which text it was reprinted several times abroad. The full text of this letter appeared in several editions of Belinsky’s works as well as in his Letters published in 1914. The original has not come down to us. The text here given is a reprint from that published in The Polar Star.

2. Gogol went abroad in 1836 where, with short intermissions, he lived for many years.

3. The knout with a single lash used as an instrument of punishment in Russia was substituted by the cat-o’-three tails in accordance with the criminal code of 1845.

4. Gogol had said all this in a letter to Count S. S. Uvarov in April 1845.

5. Gogol in Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends had written of his intention of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

6. Gogol had not mentioned Belinsky by name in his Correspondence, but it was obvious to all that it was him he had in mind when speaking of the critics. Thus in Chapter VII he wrote that Odyssey ... would refreshen criticism. Criticism was tired and confused from dealing with the baffling works of modern literature, it had flown off at a tangent, and, waiving literary topics, was “beginning to dote.”

7. Refers to P. A. Vyazemsky’s article Yazikov and Gogol.

8. In an article On the “ ’s ovremennik ” Gogol -wrote: “Thank God, two of our... first-class poets are still alive and well – Prince Vyazemsky and Yazikov.” Furthermore, having in view a new edition of his Correspondence Gogol asked Prince Vyazemsky: “read, acquaint yourself, strictly examine and set right my book... . Regard the manuscript,” he wrote? “as you would your own cherished property .. And so, dear Prince, do not forsake me, and may God reward you for it, for that will be a truly Christian act of charity.” The praise and this plea apparently had their effect, for Prince Vyazemsky wrote his article Yazikov and Gogol in defence of Gogol’s book.

9. In the foreword to the second edition of Dead Souls Gogol wrote: “Much in this book has been written wrongly, not as things are really happening in the land of Russia. I ask yon, dear reader, to correct me. Do not spurn this matter. I ask you to do it.”

10. The words in brackets were, of course deliberately omitted by Herzen in The Polar Star to avoid giving publicity to the names of Nekrasov and Annenkov mentioned in Belinsky’s letter.

Literary Criticism Archive

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 […]

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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 […]

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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."

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The Tragic Hero of Antigone
The "Antigone" by Sophocles and Its Historical Context
Antigone by Sophocles Essay Example
Arrogance and Wisdom in The Tragedy of Antigone
The Ancient Greek Tragedy "Antigone"
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Sophokles Antigone, epeisodion 2, 441
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Summary and analysis of Antigone by Sophocles

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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
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 ...
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 Study Guide
Antigone was performed sometime around the year 441 B.C.E., just before Athens fought a campaign against the revolt of Samos. Sophocles was selected to be one of nine generals in that campaign. These historical events are relevant because some of the play's central issues are the appropriate use of power by the state, the possibility of justifiable rebellion, and the duties of citizens to obey ...
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 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
PDF Sophocles' Antigone
essay by director Karen Libman. Antigone begins after Oedipus and Jocasta's sons have killed each other in a battle over the kingship. The new king, Kreon, decrees that the brother who attacked with a foreign army remain unburied and promises death to anyone who deﬁes him. The play centers on Antigone's refusal to obey Kreon's law
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.
Antigone: a Heroine Meets Her Tragedy
Get a tailor-made essay on. 'Antigone: a Heroine Meets Her Tragedy'. Get original essay. The first quality of a tragic hero, the noble birth, is satisfied by the fact that Antigone is one of the four children of Oedipus: Polyneices, Eteocles, Ismene, and Antigone. Oedipus, whose life and family as a whole are the main focal point of Sophocles ...
The Ancient Greek Tragedy "Antigone"
189 writers online. Learn More. 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 ...
Antigone Essays
Antigone, the title character of Sophocles' Antigone, faces the moral dilemma of whether to honor divine or mortal laws. While King Creon has decreed "no one shall bury [Polyneices]," the laws of the Gods dictate that all corpses must be buried... Antigone essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by ...
Antigone Essay Questions
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "Antigone" by Sophocles. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Antigone Essay Questions
Antigone study guide contains a biography of Sophocles, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. More books than SparkNotes.
Antigone
Essays and criticism on Sophocles' Antigone - Antigone. Oedipus' two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, each lead an army which clashes at the gate of Thebes.
PDF Romeo and Juliet Overture -Fantasy—Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
omeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy—Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Even a cursory review of the lives of most of the significant composers of the nineteenth century—-from Berlioz to Verdi—shows them. to have been fascinated with the timeless art of Shakespeare. In fact, it is a major trait of Romanticism as an intellectual movement to have plumbed.
Letter to N. V. Gogol by V. G. Belinsky 1847
1. The publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence, with Friends was not a complete surprise for Belinsky.Six months before Gogol had published in the Sovremennik, Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Mosk-vityanin an article entitled Odyssey, which was later embodied as a separate chapter in Selected Passages.Belinsky claimed that this article, by its paradoxicalness and "high-flown ...
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 ...