Play: Antigone

Context and Premise
Set in Thebes in the aftermath of civil war, Sophocles' Antigone (c. 441 BCE) dramatizes the first political crisis of Creon's reign. The brothers Eteocles and Polyneices have slain one another in battle. Creon, the new ruler, decrees honors for Eteocles but forbids burial for Polyneices, branding him a traitor. Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and sister to both dead men, resolves to defy the edict and perform burial rites in obedience to divine law and familial duty. The play opens with Antigone recruiting her sister Ismene; Ismene, fearful of state power and the penalties for disobedience, refuses to join her.

Plot Summary
Creon's proclamation asserts state authority over the dead and threatens death to anyone who violates it. A sentry arrives to report that someone has sprinkled dust over Polyneices’ body, a token burial. Creon rages against insubordination and demands the culprit. The guards catch Antigone returning to complete the rites with libations. Brought before Creon, she openly admits her deed, declaring the gods' unwritten laws superior to mortal decrees. Ismene, swept by sisterly loyalty, tries to share the blame, but Antigone rejects the false confession, insisting Ismene is innocent because she refused to act.

Creon's resolve hardens. Antigone is betrothed to his son Haemon, who pleads that public opinion favors mercy and that flexibility is a ruler's strength. Their debate turns bitter; Creon equates yielding with weakness and accuses Haemon of being enslaved by love. To avoid polluting the city with bloodshed, Creon changes the execution to a living entombment: Antigone will be sealed in a cave with minimal provisions and left to die.

The blind seer Teiresias arrives, warning that the gods reject Thebes' sacrifices because animals have fed on Polyneices' unburied corpse and the altars are defiled. He prophesies ruin if Creon persists: a corpse for a corpse, grief within Creon's house. Shaken at last, Creon resolves to bury Polyneices and free Antigone, but he acts too late. He and his attendants first inter Polyneices; then at the cave they find Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon, despairing and enraged, attempts to strike his father, misses, and turns the sword upon himself, dying in Antigone's arms or at her side.

Climax and Aftermath
A messenger brings the news to the palace. Eurydice, Creon's wife, hears of her son's death, returns silently to the house, and takes her own life, cursing Creon as the cause of their family’s ruin. Creon reappears carrying Haemon’s body, a broken figure who recognizes too late the folly of his pride. The Chorus, elders of Thebes, pronounce the tragic lesson: wisdom comes through suffering; reverence for the gods must guide human law; hubris invites calamity.

Themes and Significance
Antigone opposes the edict on grounds of divine justice, kinship, and the timeless obligations of burial, confronting a ruler who equates order with absolute command. The play probes collisions between public duty and private conscience, male authority and female defiance, youthful idealism and rigid governance. Neither figure is simple: Antigone’s uncompromising piety courts martyrdom, while Creon’s insistence on law curdles into tyranny. Through reversals and recognition, Sophocles charts how inflexibility and wounded pride turn a political dispute into familial catastrophe, making Antigone a touchstone for debates on civil disobedience and the limits of state power.