Antigone by Sophocles

*contains spoilers*


Sophocles’s Antigone begins with the late Oedipus’s two daughters, the titular Antigone and her sister, Ismene, deep in conflict. At the heart of the conflict lies one of the piece’s main themes: the law of the gods versus the law of man, which erupts as Creon, King of Thebes, decrees that Polyneices, shamed brother of the sisters Antigone and Ismene, shall not receive the proper burial rights and shall, instead, have his carrion picked apart by “hungry birds of prey”. Antigone attempts to persuade the man-law abiding Ismene to aid her in burying the body of their brother, so as to respect the law of the gods, but is unsuccessful and, as she attempts to shuffle the dust over her brother’s rotting corpse alone is caught, arrested and sentenced to die in isolation in a cave by order of Creon.


It is here that the blind seer Teiresias makes his entrance. Teiresias, speaking on behalf of the god, Phoebus Apollo, urges Creon to observe the proper rights of the law of the gods, regardless of Polyneices’s shameful and traitorous attack on Thebes. In an act of hubris, however, as is typical in the tragedies of Sophocles, Creon simply cannot accept that his fate should be determined by the will of the gods, and so does not relent from his initial decisions to allow Polyneice’s body to be picked apart by exposure and to punish Antigone for attempting to honour her brother in the eyes of the gods. Here we see Sophocles address the supposition that, if the fate of man is indeed determined by the will of the gods, what use is the concept of free will – and why does the law of man really matter? Sophocles shapes the positing of this notion in the downfall of Creos, as Antigone commits suicide before he can change his course and secure her release, and his own son and wife, Haemon and Eurydice respectively, take their lives also; “Lead me away, a rash, a misguided / man, / Whose blindness has killed a wife and a son.”


Sophocles carries over this notion of blindness into Oedipus the King, which was supposedly written ten years after Antigone but actually concerns events that precede the events of this particular text, and also includes the blind prophet Teiresias (as do many of the Greek texts, The Odyssey included – though in that Homeric piece in the form of a ghost), who plays a once more pivotal role. Antigone herself even makes mention of her father (and brother) Oedipus, as she declares “My father’s sin! That is the source of all / my anguish”. Oedipus is also clearly at the will and humour of the gods, as he unknowingly fulfils his father’s given prophecy in slaughtering his father, Laius King of Thebes, and bears children with his own mother. The real tragedy is, of course, that man is left merely to consider “Of happiness, far the greatest part / Is wisdom, and reverence towards the gods.” The only real act of human power on display, one discerns, is the act of taking one’s own life. Tragedy, indeed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Chouans by Honoré de Balzac

*contains spoilers* The Chouans , the first of Honoré de Balzac’s many contributions to his panoramic narrative world, latterly titled La Comédie Humaine , should have been the text with which I began my likely long adventure through this author’s works. On a whim of sorts, I read Cousin Bette (1847), unaware of its place in the corpus; and then, once cognisant of the galactic extent of La Comédie Humaine , and as a way for me to gain a surer footing going forwards, I moved on to Père Goriot (1835), which appears towards the front end of the narrative arc. One constraint that exists at the outset for those readers who cannot speak nor indeed read French is that of accessibility to the words on the page in one’s given language. Considering the wealth of material to-hand, examples of translators either willing or able to step forwards to build those bridges over the last two centuries, and thus allow readers of other languages entry into the afterlife of the original texts (Walter Benj...
Read more

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

*contains spoilers* ‘The ruin gives absence, so to speak, a material dwelling: a rock-solid site that, paradoxically, embodies a sense that the world is also porous, uncertain, and insubstantial.’ David B. Morris. I have to say from the outset that I wrote more notes during the reading of this book than I have while reading any other text – which, given its wordcount relative to the likes of War and Peace , Don Quixote , Middlemarch , etc., speaks for itself. That so much can potentially be plumbed from so few words reflects, I think, both the philosophical depths of the content and its relevance to the experiences of those within our time. In fact, it is so densely packed with suggestion that questions and ideas kept irrepressibly springing forth. However, that may also have a lot to do with my own philosophical ponderings at the time of reading. This blog post will only pertain to a few, choice threads which specifically resonated with me; but, be assured, there is so much more that ...
Read more

Spies by Michael Frayn

*contains spoilers* Stephen Wheatley, the narrator of Frayn’s bildungsroman, Spies, embarks on a journey of reminiscence and lamentation of his early years following a nostalgic whiff of “liguster”, later identified as “privet”, on his daughter’s driveway one evening. Now a man of eighty-something, Stephen leaves his homeland of Germany for the Close of his childhood town in England, as he yearns to search for the answers to the questions painfully reawakened by his olfactory senses. Frayn uses Stephen as an unreliable narrator, fluctuating sporadically between Stephen’s past and present self as he reminisces on the events that shaped his transition from naïve innocence to realised maturity. This method of Frayn’s not only effectively accentuates the differences between the two Stephens, it also creates gaps in the plot providing the reader with further unanswered questions, creating a sense of tension and growing interest as Stephen’s memories are broken, realised, questioned, reconsi...
Read more