SOPHOCLES l ANTIGONE

Antigone is said to have been composed around 441 BC by Sophocles, a great tragedy

writer who resided in the city-state of Athens. During the 5th century, Ancient Greece saw the

Golden Age, also known as the Classical Period, which saw the development of art, philosophy,

architecture, and theater. Many people began to create Greek tragedy plays, and many of these

playwrights were motivated by what was happening in Athens. Sophocles was a historical Greek

playwright, born in Colonus close to Athens, Greece in 496 B.C.E. Sophocles was the younger

contemporary of Aeschylus and the older contemporary of Euripides. His father, Sophillus, was a

wealthy manufacturer of armor. Sophocles had a decent education himself that he had played an

important role in the society, including in the military, foreign policy, and arts. He was an active

member of the government and has a great influence on the Greek arts. Athenian democracy

demanded that its citizens take part in all aspects of government. The relatively small amount of

information about Sophocles' civil life suggests that he is a popular favorite, actively participating

in the community and demonstrating his outstanding artistic talent. They represent a lasting and

outstanding attachment to Athens, its government, religion and social form.

Among the innovations he had contributed, perhaps considered his major innovation, was

the introduction of a third actor into the dramatic performance. This additional of third character

onstage became a gateway to increase the characters as well as the interaction between them. The

complexity of the situation, fluidity of plots and scenarios, and the extension of dramatic conflicts

were the improvements happened because of this innovation. In Sophocles’ Antigone, many

characters were present with their own personality, roles, and participation, and each scene and

plot in the play has a lot more to offer. The usual Sophoclean drama provides some characters,

awesome of their dedication and strength and owning some strongly drawn characteristics or faults
that integrate with a selected set of situations to guide them unavoidably to a tragic fate. Like most

Greek tragedies, they draw their subject matter from mythology and foreground situations of

extreme violence and suffering, their characters facing bitter conflicts, unintended crimes, and

unforeseen reversals of fortune. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.4) In the Greek world, he was known for

being the most successful tragedian, and up until today, all his works are still relevant.

Sophocles’ characters experience catastrophe through disorienting confrontations with

unexpected information-- for Creon, that his treatment of Polynices and Antigone is not sound

policy but an offense to the gods. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.5) Sophocles also excels at showing the

emotional investments and blind spots that keep people from seeing the truth until too late: Creon's

commitment to his role as leader. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.5) In general, Sophocles’ fascination with

outsize heroic personalities is complemented by sympathetic portrayals of milder, more

circumspect figures, like Chrysothemis and Antigone's similar sister, Ismene. (Murnaghan, 2010,

p.6) In the Antigone, Ismene, even knowing that she was innocent, was willing to take the blame

for the sake of Antigone’s safety and assured that her sister wouldn’t be alone prisoned so both of

them were considered law violators by Creon. Sophocles portrayed young men trying to act

reasonably and honorably while caught between conflicting loyalties: Haemon in Antigone, caught

between his father, Creon, and Antigone, his own fiancée and Creon's defiant challenger.

(Murnaghan, 2010, p.7)

Sophocles frequently dramatizes how individuals get to conclusions about their behaviors

and surroundings. This point is illustrated by Antigone, for many modern readers an inspiring

model of adherence to principle, but portrayed with more complexity by Sophocles. (Murnaghan,

2010, p.7) Antigone was very certain to continue burying her brother’s body despite Creon’s

decree, and she defended her plan to Ismene like it was a noble thing to do. To support her
sentiment, she adds that her action would be favored by the gods and portrays a genuine sister’s

love. However, it is only afterwards that she formulates these thoughts into principles. When she

has to answer Creon's complaint that she has broken the law, she aligns her action with “unwritten

and inalterable laws of the gods” (454–455). When she is faced with death, she explains the logic

by which a brother merits this sacrifice: a brother is irreplaceable as a husband or a son would not

be. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.7)

In social and political roles, Antigone talks in terms of universal norms, and her specific

convictions are tied to her gender. Sophocles’ dialogue clarifies the connections between his

characters’ responses to demanding circumstances and their roles within the family and the city.

Of the three major tragedians, Sophocles responds least directly to the vicissitudes of fifth-century

Athenian politics. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.7) Nonetheless, he utilizes heroic myth's social contexts,

such as the army camp and the royal family, to attack the institutions of his own time indirectly.

While the distant setting allows him to avoid direct political criticism, his image of human

institutions as incapable of preventing tragedies and frequently complicit in them has a modern

tone to it.

Attempts to identify Sophoclean characters with particular Athenian leaders—Oedipus

with Pericles or Alcibiades, Ajax with Themistocles—have never been fully convincing. But that

Athenian history provides some possible candidates shows that democracy did not eliminate the

issue of the prominent, exceptional individual. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.8) Several of Sophocles' plays

highlight the ambiguity of leadership, demonstrating how the characteristics that differentiate a

community's benefactor may also make him its destroyer. Like their fifth-century audiences,

Sophocles’ characters define themselves and their actions within the structures and values of the
city. But their self-definitions are never wholly stable or adequate to the unexpected force of tragic

events. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.8)

Sophocles' use of the chorus contributes to the epic plots' fifth-century civic relevance.

Sophocles, more than any other great tragedian, employs a chorus of male citizens. The fluctuating

fortunes of Sophoclean heroes are measured in their changing relations with their choruses and,

by extension, the larger groups those choruses represent: transient moments of flourishing are

marked by an ideal equilibrium between leaders and followers. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.9) Sophocles

also used the chorus in different ways, sometimes to heighten the impact of tragic occurrences.

Other choral songs expand the audience's understanding, preparing the way for the

characters’ confrontations or summoning up a wider store of human experience and the ever-

present gods. The chorus of Antigone enters with a song of thanksgiving for the bright day of

Thebes’ victory against its attackers, and so establishes the atmosphere of recent danger in which

the plot unfolds. As Antigone unfolds, the chorus finds a variety of frameworks for what it

witnesses: the news that Polynices has been buried inspires a famous meditation on human daring

and resourcefulness. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.9)

Humans are overmatched by the gods, whose power and presence are made known in the

unexpected twists and turns of individual destinies. Sophocles reaffirms the supremacy of the gods

as they unsettle the lives of his characters, working in ways that are usually recognized only in

retrospect. (Murnaghan, 2010, p.10) The chasm between mortals and immortals is so wide that

being human and accepting the gods' words is sometimes impossible.

Sophocles believed in democracy and considered that having too much authority in one

person was bad for the populace. Sophocles supported the direct democracy that emerged in the
fifth century and did not resist it. Creon has much too much control in Antigone, resembling a

dictatorship. In Antigone, the gods punish those who do not properly bury their dead. Creon was

aware of this, yet he chose not to bury Polynices. There were many political upheavals and battles

in the fifth century that may have prompted Sophocles to create this play during the period. Ancient

Athens was through peace treaties and the development of a democracy that is now acknowledged.

At the time this play was first performed, Sophocles was one of the state treasurers in

Athens and by then had experience as a general. Such personal life experiences perhaps were

factors in his exploration of public and private duty in Antigone. (Villagomez, 2020) Villagomez

further added that, while the impact of personal occupation on his works is conjecture, the struggles

in his plays remain relevant to audiences of various backgrounds as they grapple with questions of

agency and free will when faced with the pressing influence of social institutions. Villagomez also

stated that, for the historical context, the play was written during a period that was bookended by

turmoil, from wars to revolts. Some consider the character of Creon to be loosely modeled on

Pericles, an Athenian statesman involved in the formation of the Athenian empire. Sophocles

interprets and portrays the world around him through the dynamic lens of theatre.

His plays dealt with subjects like as the relationship between man and the Gods and how

man behaves in particular difficult situations, and his heroes had to overcome numerous

challenges. Sophocles was motivated by human nature and its wellbeing, as evidenced by the

following phrase from 'Antigone':

“Many are the wonders of the world,” says Sophocles, ‘but none is more wonderful than man.”
References:

Taplin, O. and Woodard, . Thomas M.. "Sophocles." Encyclopedia Britannica,

January 29, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sophocles.

Murnaghan, S. “Sophocles (496–406 BCE)”. University of Pennsylvania, 2010.

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=classic
s_papers

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