Antigone

Antigone is a timeless drama that pits an individual--in this case, a woman, no less--against the power and might of her government. When I read this play for the first time in 1971, I knew that Sophocles wrote it just for my day and time and the Vietnam War. Others throughout the past 2500 years have thought that the play was written about their own time and situation. Perhaps as you read it, you can see it as a play written about your time and your situation.

A note on pronunciation: "Antigone" is pronounced with four syllables: ann TIG uh KNEE, not "anti-gone."

A Timeline Review
Let's put the play in historical perspective. Literary critics think that the following time periods are the dates of composition of the pieces we have read thus far in Western World Literature I:

For Antigone, we can be fairly certain of its date. Although no original copies of Antigone on papyrus scrolls (the "paper" of 5th century BCE Athens) have come down to us, we have numerous old copies and references to people watching the play in Athens.

Your textbook presents a map of the Mediterranean Sea, including the city of Athens in Greece, on page 104. On that map, you can find the city of Athens by looking at the lower center of that map. Find the word "ATTICA" and look directly beneath the word "ATTICA" (south) to find Athens.

The Story of King Oedipus
The story of Antigone in the play of the same name begins with the story of her father, Oedipus. That story is told in the play Oedipus Rex (often translated as Oedipus or Oedipus the King). The word "oedipus" in Greek means "bad foot" or "lame footed" or--we might say a bit unkindly today--"gimp."

Apollo was the god of [medicine and] truth [whose oracle was at Delphi in mainland Greece]. Whatever the priestess at Delphi said would happen infallibly came to pass. To attempt to act in such a way that the prophecy would be made void was as futile as to set oneself against the decrees of fate. Nevertheless, when the oracle warned Laius [who was king of Thebes] that he would die at the hands of his son he determined that this should not be. When the child was born he bound its feet together and had it exposed on a lonely mountain where it must soon die. He felt no more fear [of the oracle]; he was sure that on this point he could foretell the future better than the god. His folly was not brought home to him. He was killed, indeed, but he thought the man who attacked him was a stranger. He never knew that in his death he had proved Apollo’s truth.

When he died he was away form home and many years had passed since the baby had been left on the mountain. It was reported that a band of robbers had slain him together with his attendants, all except one, who brought the news home. The matter was not carefully investigated because Thebes was in sore straits at the time. The country around was beset by a frightful monster, the Sphinx, a creature shaped like a winged lion, but with the breasts and face of a woman. She lay in wait for the wayfarers along the roads to the city and whomever she seized she put a riddle to, telling him if he could answer it, she would let him go. No one could, and the horrible creature devoured man after man until the city was in a state of siege. The seven great gates which were the Theban’s pride remained closed, and famine drew near to the citizens.

So matters stood when there came into the stricken country a stranger, a man of great courage and great intelligence, whose name was Oedipus. He had left his home, Corinth, where he was held to be the son of the King [there] . . . . and the reason for his self-exile was another oracle [from Delphi]. Apollo had declared that he was fated to kill his father [and marry his mother]. He, too, like Laius, thought to make it impossible for the oracle to come true; he resolved never to see Polybus again. In his lonely wanderings he came into the country around Thebes and he heard what was happening there. He was a homeless, friendless man to whom life mean little and he determined to seek the Sphinx out and try to solve the riddle. "What creature," the Sphinx asked him, "goes on four feet in the morning, on two at noonday, on three in the evening?" "Man," answered Oedipus. "In childhood he creeps on hands and feet; in manhood he walks erect; in old age he helps himself with a staff." It was the right answer. The Sphinx, inexplicably, but most fortunately, killed herself; the Thebans were saved. Oedipus gained all and more than he had left [behind in Corinth]. The grateful citizens made him their King and he married the dead King’s wife, Jocasta. For many years they lived happily. It seemed that in this case Apollo’s words had been proved to be false. (Hamilton 375-379)

On his way into the town of Thebes, however, Oedipus runs into a bit of a problem. Hurrying down from the mountain pass from where the Sphinx threw herself, Oedipus encounters a traveler. Both Oedipus and the traveler are in the usual means of transport for royalty, a chariot. Because the mountain road is so narrow there is room for only one chariot to pass. Rashly and foolishly, the two argue about who will back down and who will go forward. Foolishness leads to anger and anger to battle. In the heat of the argument and battle, Oedipus kills the traveler and, saddened but no wiser, continues on his way.

Hamilton picks up the story from years later, after Oedipus and his Queen, Jocasta, have built a life and a family in Thebes. "When their two sons [Polynices and Etiocles] had grown to manhood, Thebes was visited by a terrible plague [once again]. A blight fell upon everything. Not only were men dying throughout the country, the flocks and herds and the fruits of the field were blasted as well" (Hamilton 379).

Wanting to know what the cause of the plague might be, Oedipus sends his brother-in-law, Creon, to Delphi to search for an answer. Creon returned with the news: Thebes would be spared the plague if and only if the Thebans found within their midst the man polluted from killing their king and throw that polluted man out of the city. Joyful that an answer had been found at long last, Oedipus sends for the old, blind prophet Teiresias. (Remember him from the House of Death in the Odyssey?). Teiresias was blind (in the present) but could see the future. In addition to having the gift of prophecy, he had another gift: he had been both man and woman and therefore knew the ways of all mankind--both male and female. Sent for, he appeared before King Oedipus. "For the love of God," implored Oedipus, "if you know the offending man who is the cause of the plague, tell us now that we can throw him out of the city." Teiresias, knowing all, knew the offending member, but he refused to divulge his knowledge. "Fools," said Teiresias, "you will be unable to handle this knowledge." But when Oedipus pressed him, saying that Teiresias must be protecting the murderer because he himself probably had a part in the murder, Teiresias turned on Oedipus and said: "You are yourself the murderer you seek." Of course, no one believed the old man.

So matters stand when a messenger arrives from Corinth with terrible news: Polybus, the King of Corinth was dead. But things were even worse than that. The messenger goes on to say that Oedipus had left Corinth in vain since Polybus revealed on his deathbed that Oedipus was not, in fact, his natural-born son but had been brought to the palace by a shepherd who was to place him on the hillside with bound feet, intended to let the child die. (Remember the meaning of the name "Oedipus"?). Further, the messenger went on to say, he was that shepherd and knew that Oedipus was not Polybus’s son but the son of Laius of Thebes.

Jocasta was the first to put together all the events: the bound feet, the name "Oedipus," the prophecy of killing the father, the baby taken in by a shepherd, Oedipus fated to kill his father and marry his mother. She turned white, a look of horror on her face. She knew that the baby with bound feet had been sent to the mountainside and now knew that that man stood beside her: one who had doubly tried to avoid his fate. And now she also knew a further terrible truth: Oedipus was her son and her lover!

Hamilton picks up the story when Oedipus recognizes the truth himself: "A cry of agony came from the King. At last he understood. ‘All true! Now shall my light be changed to darkness. I am accursed.’ He had murdered his father, he had married his father’s wife, his own mother. There was no help for him, for her children. All were accursed. Within the palace Oedipus wildly sought for the wife that was his mother. He found her chamber. She was dead. When the truth broke upon her she had hanged herself. Standing beside her he too turned his hand against himself, but not to end his life. He changed his light to darkness. He put out his eyes [with the pin of a brooch on Jocasta’s gown]. The black world of blindness was a refuge; better to be there than to see with strange, shamed eyes the world that had been so bright" (382) and that had beheld his mother’s body as his lover’s.

Later, Oedipus leaves Thebes and his sons, Polyneices and Etocles, become rulers of Thebes. The house of Oedipus is a doomed house. After Oedipus’s death outside Thebes, the two brothers fight for control of the city. Polyneices leaves the city to seek the aid of a nearby town, Argos, and comes armed against his brother. In hand-to-hand combat the two kill each other in front of the gates of Thebes. Creon, brother to Jocasta, takes over the reins of government as next in line to the throne. To restore order, to reward the warrior who defends the city, and to punish the one who attacks it, he declares full honors in burial for Etocles and no burial for Polyneices.

Some Conventions of Greek Tragedy
The term "tragedy" has various meanings in general English vocabulary. In literature, it also has several meanings as it applies to stories, poems, and drama. As it applies to Antigone and other dramas of 5th century BCE Athens, it has a much more limited and fixed meaning.

The restricted meaning of the word as it applies to drama of 5th century BCE Greece was articulated by Aristotle who, as an Athenian, saw the plays of Sophocles when they were first written and produced. From watching the plays of Sophocles and other Athenian dramatists, Aristotle arrived at a description of what a tragedy involves. Later critics have looked at his description and said that it is a restriction on what a tragedy must be like; most people, today, however, see Aristotle’s description as a description, not a limitation. Most critics today say that a tragedy must be different for each age, society, and culture of which it is a part. Whichever it may be, here is what Aristotle said about tragedy.

Harmon and Holman say that tragedy "treats human beings in terms of their godlike potential, of their transcendental ideals, of the part of themselves that is in rebellion against not only the implacable universe but also the frailty of their own flesh and will. In this sense tragedy is the record of human striving and aspirations in contrast to comedy, which is the amusing spectacle of people’s limitations and frailties" (448).

Read all of the play, beginning on page 632 of your textbook. (You may want to read some background material, which starts on page 585 of the text.)

Optional: Available on the Web

All the actors in the ancient Greek theatre wore masks. See what they looked like.
The Greek theatres were outdoor amphitheaters for the most part. See a diagram and description of the typical Greek theatre like those in which Antigone would have been staged.
The Perseus Project (housed at Tufts University) offers a huge site of searchable pages: all things classical--Greek and Roman art, architecture, texts, and so forth. Here is a reconstruction of the theatre at Delos, as an audience member would have seen the stage. Here is a floor plan of that same theatre. And, finally, here is an image of that same theatre today, seen from the viewpoint of an actor on stage.
The Origins and Ancient History of Wine is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.
The Ancient City of Athens site (maintained at Indiana University) collects a great number of images of 5th century BCE Athens, including an image of the the city of Athens from the spot where the theatre of Dionysus stood on the slope of the Acropolis.

Western Thought: Rational and Abstract Reasoning
We can trace to the Greeks our desire to think through situations and events with rational thought and abstract reasoning. Rather than depending on magic, miracles, mystery, revelation, or noted authority, the Greeks held that rational thought was a means to discover order in the universe. Perry states that "Western thought begins with the Greeks, who first defined the individual by the capacity to reason" (98).

Political Freedom
While most governments and rulers in the ancient world treated its poeple as subject, the Greek ideal was to treat its people as citizens. The Greeks held that held that mean are capable of self-government, making their own laws, organizing a system of carrying out those laws, organizing a system of carrying out those laws, and arranging for the rule of law rather than the rule of men. The Greeks saw political governments--the city and the nation--as "a community of free citizens who made laws in their own interest" (Perry 97).

The Dignity and Importance of the Individual
The Greeks saw individual humans as endowed with ethical freedom to make their own choices and control their own lives--to "choose between shame and honor, between cowardice and duty, between moderation and excess, between developing the self or slow stagnation, between seeking excellence for self or moral poverty" (97). Fundamentally, the Greeks gave us what we today call humanism--the belief that human beings are worthy, have dignity, can choose for themselves, and have an obligation to become fully conscious human entities.

Athens
Athens has come to represent more than just a city on a hill in ancient Greece. For thousands of years, people of western Europe have seen Athens as a symbol of all that is good about western civilization. Even today, when modern archeologists want to show how important and refined a certain Mayan city in Latin America is, they call it the "Athens of the Maya." After Civil War Reconstruction, Nashville Tennessee built a replica of the Parthenon (the temple in Athens dedicated to Athena) and called itself the "Athens of the South."

The Odyssey
Today, from Odysseus's travels, we call any long journey an odyssey, even if the "journey" is not a literal journey. For example, a person going through trying times and emerging on the other side of those times is said to have undergone an odyssey.

The Oedipus Complex
The general outline of the story of Oedipus is familiar to many people today. Most of us connect the phrase "Oedipus complex" to the character of Oedipus in Sophocles’s play, and with good reason. In late 19th century CE in Vienna, Austria, a physician by the name of Sigmund Freud examined the psychological processes of his patients and determined that many of their problems were related to sexual "dysfunction." He also examined the normal progress of psychological development of children and determined that most children, both male and female, go through a phase in early childhood when they identify with their mothers. When this identification did not shift in boys to their fathers during later childhood, Freud thought that this problem continued to plague some men into adulthood and give rise to problems relating to women as adult sexual beings. The normal stage of psychological development when boys in early childhood identify with the mother he called the "Oedipal" phase. The problems brought on by not shifting identification to the parent of the opposite sex he called the "Oedipal complex."

Sophocles wrote the play in 5th century BCE Athens; Freud gave the personality trait and psychological state a name in 19th century CE Vienna.

Harman, William and Hugh C. Holman. A Handbook to Literature. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. 2000. 448.

Perry, Marvin et al. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society. 2 vols. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1996. Vol. 1. 96-97.