Professor McInnis
World Literature 205-08
December 5, 2010
Into the Theme of Antigone The Theban Trio logy tragedies were written to be performed at the Great Dionysus, a festival held in honor goddess Dionysus the goddess of fertility, theater, and wine, in Athens. Attending these plays was considered a civic duty and even criminals were let out of jail to attend. Antigone won Sophocles first prize at the festival and was an enormous success. The is one of the series in the Theban Trilogy which are the stories of Oedipus. Antigone sets after the story of Oedipus Rex which is the story of when Oedipus, King of Thebes, discovered that he had killed his father and married his mother, Jocasta. He put his own eyes out and his mother killed herself. Once Oedipus ceased being king of Thebes his two sons Eteocles and Polyneices agreed to alternate as king. Eteocles refused to give up power to Polyneices, the latter collected a foreign army of Argives and attacked the city. In the battle the Thebans triumped over the invading forces, and the two brothers killed each other with Eteocles defending the city and Polyneices attacking the city. The play begins immediately after the battle and Creon assumes the throne. Creon is the brother of Jocasta and thus the uncle of Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles, and Polyneices. King Creon allows Eteocles to be buried at once, that he might recive due honor among the shades; but he orders herald to forbid any funeral rights or burial to the corpse of Polyneices. “Let him lie unwept, unburied, a toothsome morsel for the birds of heaven, and who so touches him shall perish by the cruel death of stoning”(Johnston, 2005). The main issue in this work is to warn his people about hubris or arrogance, because he knows this will be their downfall. The play is centered around conflict including fate and free will being the center theme, man’s verses divide law , and a deeper subtext of each character’s internal conflicts and mortality. The central theme of the play is the tension between individual action and fate. Sophocles asks the question which law’s greater: God’s or man’s? Sophocles uses brilliant characterization of people at war with themselves ands inner conflict emerges as a theme of the play. As a part of the central theme of the play the tension between individual action and fate emerges. While free choices such as Antigone’s decision to defy Creon’s edict, are significant, fate is responsible for many of the most critical and devasting events of the trio logy. Creon a powerful ruler, who is proud of his wisdom, ventures in his unbounded insolence to pit his royal word against divine law and human sentiment but learns too late by the
