Antigone Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Antigone

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Zusammenfassung von Antigone

Name: Antigone
Rating: 4.7 (24 reviews)
Author: Sophocles

Sophocles

An Ancient Greek Tragedy on Civil Disobedience, Morality and Gender

4.7 (24 Bewertungen)

24 Min.

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Antigone
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What’s in it for me? A bite-sized Greek tragedy

It’s hard to imagine Western culture without Antigone. The roll call of thinkers influenced by Sophocles’s work runs to pages. The short version of that list is striking enough: it includes Kant and Hegel, Goethe and George Eliot, Richard Wagner and Virginia Woolf.

What accounts for this play’s extraordinary influence? For the critic George Steiner, the answer has to do with its timelessness. Whenever we’re confronted with conflicts between justice and law, he writes, we find ourselves returning to words, ideas, and images coined by Sophocles.

Creon, the hard-headed king of Thebes, stands for every regime that appeals to the security of the state to quash dissidents. Antigone, by contrast, stands for disobedience. She’s the voice of conscience who insists on justice even if it violates the law. That voice is echoed by Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks – men and women who, like her, elevate moral righteousness over political expediency and calmly accept the costs of dissidence.

Sophocles, though, was a playwright, not a political theorist, and Antigone is a tragedy, not a treatise. For audiences in fifth-century Athens, Creon’s insistence on preserving political order would have seemed commonsensical: the city-state was at the center of their lives, after all. Punishments for traitors were correspondingly harsh – it was forbidden to bury their bodies inside the city, for example. Creon’s aim, in other words, is understandable – noble even. But he’s too stubborn to see that it would be better served by allowing Antigone to bury her brother, and too proud to take the advice of the city's clear-sighted citizens. These flaws pervert his desired end and condemn him and those around him to their bloody fates.

That, citizens of democratic Athens thought, is the problem with tyrants (which is what Creon becomes). Their actions lead to evil outcomes even when their intentions are noble. The feedback mechanism that corrects the course of democratic governments is missing. Tyrants don’t listen to critics – they punish dissenters and double down on bad calls. That ultimately leads to the downfall of the societies they claim to be safeguarding. Freedom, in short, isn’t a luxury – it’s the failsafe that guarantees the moral and political integrity of states.

At the heart of this tragedy is an accidental tyrant – and the woman who resists him. By the time Creon sees his error, it’s too late: Thebes and its leading family have been ruined.

Part 1: “I will bury him even if it means death.”

The conflict that tore the city of Thebes apart is over. Peace, though, hasn’t healed the wounds of war. Before the city can move forward, it needs to reckon with its recent past.

Sophocles doesn’t give us a full account of the Theban civil war. He didn’t need to: Athenian theatergoers were familiar enough with the mythology that forms the backdrop to the play.

We need some context, however, before we can jump into the drama.

The old king of Thebes, Oedipus, is a tragic hero. According to Greek myth, he fulfills a terrible prophecy: he unknowingly kills his own father and marries his mother, bringing disaster to his city and his family. When he learns what he’s done, he blinds himself with a dagger. “Why should I have eyes,” he asks in one of Sophocles’s earlier plays, when “nothing I saw was worth seeing?” Banished from the city, he becomes a wandering outcast.

Oedipus’s incestuous marriage to his mother, Jocasta, produced four children – two girls and two boys. After his banishment, his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, take turns sharing the throne of Thebes. They both desire absolute power, though, and soon come to blows. In the struggle that ensues, Eteocles gains the upper hand and sends his brother into exile. Polynices returns with an army of mercenaries at his back, sparking the Theban civil war. Eteocles’s forces triumph, but not before the two brothers have killed each other in a battle outside the city’s gates. Power now passes to Creon, the uncle of both Oedipus and his children.

All of Oedipus’s children play a role in the play’s opening act. His daughters, Antigone and Ismene, are physically present. Their fallen brothers, meanwhile, are there in spirit, haunting the scene. It’s their fate that the two women are discussing when we first meet them.

Antigone has asked Ismene to meet her outside the city, away from the prying eyes of its inhabitants. She’s in a state of despair, her thoughts jumbled, and her words hurried. As Ismene puts it, she’s as “clear as fog at sea.” What’s caused her pain? Antigone says that she’s never seen such misery and madness; it’s monstrous, she cries. What is, her sister asks her. Antigone’s answer echoes through the rest of the play: this “shame and dishonor.”

Eteocles has been buried with all the proper rites – a funeral with full honors befitting a man now celebrated as a hero for his role in repulsing an invasion. His brother, Polynices, meanwhile, has been denied any form of burial – a punishment worse than that handed out to traitors. Creon has ordered that his body be left exposed on a hillside for vultures to peck at and promised to execute anyone who goes against his will.

That’s why Antigone wants to speak with Ismene: she’s decided to defy the king and bury Polynices. It’s time, she says, that Ismene “showed her colors.” Will she do what’s right?

Ismene is in a bind. She wants to honor her brother – like Antigone, she sees it as a duty owed to family. But she also believes that the law must be obeyed, “even if it hurts us.” These words take us to the heart of the ethical dilemma that Sophocles set out to explore. Do unjust laws command respect? Yes, says Ismene, who, like many ancient Greeks, believes that obedience to the law is non-negotiable. To let individuals decide which laws to follow and which to disregard is to rip up the social contract. It’s a recipe for anarchy – a word that, for the Greeks, conjured up images of a barbaric life-and-death struggle between isolated individuals.

Ismene says she’ll pray for her brother, but that’s all she can do. To do more, she argues, would be to “take up arms against the city.” Antigone rejects this argument – for her, it’s a cover for cowardice. What we do, she says, is a choice. Nothing can stop us doing what’s right; we’re always free to act. We can be punished for those actions, but that’s the price of our freedom.

“I will bury him,” Antigone concludes, “even if it means death.”

For her, justice is bigger than the city. To give the dead a proper burial is a religious commandment. Antigone isn’t an anarchist. Yes, the laws of cities and kings matter a great deal, but those laws are only valid if they conform to the eternal laws of the gods.

Part 2: “Give me a friend of this city and I’ll pay him full honor, in life and death.”

Greek plays had small casts. Every role in Antigone, for example, would have been played by a rotating cast of just three actors. But there’s always a fourth voice on stage: the chorus, a group of up to fifty singers who play the part of the city’s inhabitants. Think of it as a gossipy, singing-and-dancing cross-section of the townsfolk giving us their take on the day’s events.

Thebes, we learn from the chorus, is relieved. Victory against Polynices’s invading army proves the gods are on the city’s side. Now that that war is over and the city is safe, it sings, it’s time to forget old grievances and move on. It’s at this point that we first meet the king.

Part 3: “What greater glory could I win than to give my own brother a decent burial?”

Creon is a little smug, perhaps. He clearly likes playing the wise philosopher-king. But he’s no tyrant – not yet, anyway. He has said that a man’s character is revealed when he makes laws. That’s not quite right in his case. His character will be revealed when his laws are defied. Which brings us to our next scene: the showdown between Antigone and Creon.

We catch sight of something darker in Creon’s character when a guard reports that Polynices’s body has been covered up. He immediately accuses the hapless soldier of treachery – someone, he claims, has paid him to bury the traitor and deceive the king – before threatening to torture him. “Death,” he says menacingly, “will be too good for this man.” In the end, he releases the guard, instructing him to destroy the makeshift grave, watch over the site until the culprit returns, and then arrest the person.

Part 4: “Bend or break.”

Creon’s son, Haemon, now takes to the stage. He pleads for the life of Antigone – the woman he loves and plans on marrying. Creon, though, is unrelenting.

Antigone, he says coldly, is a “worthless woman” and worthless women are a “misery in bed.” No reason, then, to mourn her loss – let her find her husband among the dead. His hands are bound. There’s no greater crime on earth than anarchy. It destroys cities, rips up houses, and breaks the ranks of armies. Laws are everything; rulers cannot defend those who break them.

Part 5: “God help me, I admit it all!”

Bend or break, Haemon tells his father, and the chorus echoes that advice. He ignores it. He hears the same advice once more before the end of the play. This time he’ll heed it.

It comes from an old blind soothsayer who has advised many rulers of Thebes – a man called Tiresias. The gods speak through Tiresias. They’re angered, he tells Creon, by his refusal to bury Polynices, and no longer accept prayers or sacrifices from the city. If he doesn’t release Antigone and give her brother a proper funeral, great evils will fall on Thebes and its king.

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Worum geht es in Antigone?

Antigone (c. 441 BC) is a tragedy by Sophocles, one of ancient Greece’s greatest playwrights. After a civil war, two brothers – the leaders of rival factions – are dead. One is remembered as a patriotic hero; the other, as a treacherous usurper. The king of Thebes, Creon, has forbidden anyone to bury the traitor – an order the man’s sister, Antigone, can’t square with her conscience. The stage is set for a conflict pitting the individual against the state, justice against law, idealism against realism, and a defiant woman against a male-dominated world.

Wer Antigone lesen sollte

Theater enthusiasts interested in the history of drama
Fans of classical literature and mythology
Anyone interested in exploring themes of morality, family, and power

Über den Autor

Sophocles was an Athenian playwright who lived in the fifth century BC. By the time of his death at the age of 90 around 406 BC, he was the most celebrated author in Athens – a city-state at the height of its power and cultural influence. Only seven of the 120 plays Sophocles wrote have survived. Those plays, however, left an indelible mark not only on his own medium of tragic theater, but on Western literature as a whole.

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