Antigone
From Antigone [c. 442]
Sophocles (c. 497-406 BCE)
CREON: (Slowly, dangerously) And you, Antigone,
You with your head hanging, do you confess this
thing?
ANTIGONE: I do. I deny nothing.
Creon (to SENTRY): You may go.
[Exit SENTRY.]
(To ANTIGONE) Tell me, tell me briefly:
Had you heard my proclamation touching this matter?
ANTIGONE: It was public. Could I help hearing it?
CREON: And yet you dared defy the law.
ANTIGONE:I dared.
It was not God’s proclamation. That final Justice
That rules the world below makes no such laws.
Your edict, King, was strong,
But all your strength is weakness itself against
The immortal unrecorded laws of God.
They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,
Operative forever, beyond man utterly.
I knew I must die, even without your decree:
I am only mortal. And if I must die
Now, before it is my time to die,
Surely this is no hardship: can anyone
Living, as I live, with evil all about me,
Think Death less than a friend? This death of mine
Is of no importance; but if I had left my brother
Lying in death unburied, I should have suffered.
Now I do not.
You smile at me. Ah Creon,
Think me a fool, if you like; but it may well be
That a fool convicts me of folly.
CHORUS: Like father, like daughter: both headstrong, deaf to reason!
She has never learned to yield.
CREON: She has much to learn.
The inflexible heart breaks first, the toughest iron
Cracks first, and the wildest horses bend their necks
At the pull of the smallest curb.
Pride? In a slave?
This girl is guilty of a double insolence,
Breaking the given laws and boasting of it.
Who is the man here,
She or I, if this crime goes unpunished?
Questions for Discussion
1. What is the conflict between Creon and Antigone?
A) Antigone wants to marry a man whom Creon does not approve of.
B) Antigone is deaf.
C) Antigone has broken one of Creon's laws.
D) Antigone's brother has just died.
E) Creon is jealous of Antigone's independence.
2. Why is Antigone not afraid to die?
A) Because she is old
B) Because she has obeyed the laws of God.
C) Because she is a slave.
D) Because she has disobeyed the king.
E) Because she is immortal.
3. What does Creon seem to be concerned with in the last two lines?
A) Punishment
B) Antigone's virtue
C) Antigone's morality
D) Burial rituals
E) His manhood