Mans Laws vs Gods Laws in Antigone by Sophocles - Book Report/Review Example

Creon leaves Antigone to starve in a cave. And when her fiance, Haemon comes to save her, she has already hanged herself. Haemnon dies and his mother and Creon's wife also kills herself in grief. The play Antigone is based on the conflict between two laws, and forces the audience to decide whose law is greater: God's or man's Thesis Facing the characters with a moral choice, Sophocles depicts that God's laws are more important for people because they reflect eternal truth and morality while man's laws are based on power and authority of the ruler only.

At the beginning of the drama, Antigone breaks the law of her uncle, Creon, and decides to bury her dead brother against his orders. Sophocles portrays that the characters of the play follow God's laws as a source of morality and traditions, norms, and social values. In spite of the fact that every epoch creates its own values and moral rules changing our understanding of a self and life, there are some universal laws that cannot be broken. For instance, Antigone follows God's laws as the only authority of truth and moral obligations.

This funeral rite had been followed for centuries and Antigone could not break this tradition. Antigone explains her motifs to Ismene: "But if thou wilt, be guilty / of dishonoring laws which the gods have established in honor" (Sophocles, 2002, p. 190). Using this episode, Sophocles depicts that people's happiness is caused by doing what is right according to universal order and God's will, and only when a person can reach the state of true utility she achieves happiness. Antigone accepts her guilt and violation of Creon's orders but confronting the king on moral grounds.

Antigone stands upon her rights saying: "Isn't a man's right to burial decreed by divine justice I don't consider your pronouncements so important that they can just.overrule the unwritten laws of heaven." (Sophocles, 2002, p. 201). Sophocles criticizes man's laws and depicts that nonsensical laws cause death for many innocent people because of dishonor, falsehood, low moral values, and the tyranny of the bureaucratic system. The conflict between two laws unveils that God's laws are more important for people than any law created by a man.

People have a fear of God and follow their laws regardless of man's codes and bans. At the end of the play, Creon understands the futility of his laws and prohibitions introduced by him, but it is too late to change these laws: his family is dead. During the play, Haemon tries to persuade his father to change laws, but the king has remained stubborn and obstinate. For him, man's law is the only possible way to keep the king's power and authority. Creon does not want to change laws because he supposes that only a king can maintain order in his land.

Haemon criticizes the shortsightedness of his father, "Don't think you have a complete monopoly of the truth" (Sophocles, 2002, p. 215). As human existence cannot be a subject for man's orders only, so these orders as the product of the king cannot be exhaustively followed in terms of God's laws. In sum, Sophocles unveils an important conflict between man's laws and God's laws and forces the audience to rethink values and traditions followed by society. Laws created by man or a ruler force people to obey them as an inevitable and integral part of their life, but God's laws are more powerful and fearful because they reflect eternal morality and centuries of traditions.

Sophocles depicts that man's laws do not satisfy the needs of the society created in the king's interests only while God's laws are universal and cannot be altered by humans.