Antigone by Sophocles: The Concept of Justice - Book Report/Review Example

Antigone by Sophocles: The Concept of Justice Introduction One of the best known and well-studied of the works of Sophocles is the first of his trilogy of plays, Antigone. The plot revolves around the conflict between State law based on a king’s declaration, and civic duty based on religious and family ties. (Rehm, 2006) Antigone, defies a king’s order that her dead brother, Polyneices, be dishonored by leaving him unburied and exposed to be fed on by animals. She instead buries her brother and defends her action as being right and just according to divine law and family duty. The king, Creon, is offended that a woman should argue against his edict, and as punishment orders that Antigone be buried alive. Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé, tries to persuade his father to change his pronouncement, but Creon is all the more incensed, resulting in a rift between father and son. Afterwards, Creon is warned by the seer Teiresias that the former’s actions have angered the gods, after which Creon repented and sought to aright the situation. He was too late, however, as Antigone has hanged herself, Haemon committed suicide, and Eurydice, Creon’s wife, also dies by her own hand when she learns her son has died. THE KING, THE STATE & DIVINE LAW In forming a concept of justice, it is important to discern what the play views as “just”. Early in the story, Antigone and her sister, Ismene, argue about burying their brother’s body against Creon’s order. Antigone says she plans to do so, and rebukes her sister: “As for thee, scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.” To this Ismene replies: “I scorn them not, but to defy the State or break her ordinance I have no skill.” This exchange underscores one of the overriding conflicts in the play – where man’s law contradicts divine law, is a person justified in following the latter on pain of possible punishment under the former? As Antigone observes, “Manifold a kings prerogatives, and not the least that all his acts and all his words are law.” This points to the fact that the king’s word is law, though the king be but human and prone to error, anger and vindictiveness. The morale individual is thus torn between following the law as laid by the king, and following one’s conscience to do what he perceives is right. When Haemon tries to persuade Creon, this theme if further stressed: Haemon to Creon: Therefore, my father, cling not to one mood, And deemed not thou art right, all others wrong. For whoso thinks that wisdom dwells with him, That he alone can speak or think aright, Such oracles are empty breath when tried. The wisest man will let himself be swayed By others wisdom and relax in time. In this passage, Haemon cautions Creon against rash judgment, and tried to convince him to seek the counsel of others because wisdom does not reside in only one man. In succeeding conversation he says, “A State for one man is no State at all.” Creon sees it another way: “And am I wrong, if I maintain my rights?” asserting thereby that it is his right as king to issue such an order. Haemon drives home the difference between his father’s law and divine law: “Talk not of rights; thou spurnst the due of Heaven.” By such words, Haemon stresses that “right” as defined by human law, even if it be the king’s, is of no moment if it contradicts the moral “right”. ABUSE OF POWER and the INFERIORITY OF FEMALES Another recurring theme in the play is that of the inferiority of women to men in the determination of justice. The following is Antigone’s argument when confronted by Creon: Antigone to Creon: Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus, And she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, Could’st by a breath annul and override The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven. Antigone speaks of Justice as female, “she who sits enthroned with gods”, and that the human laws by which she (Antigone) was being punished is not dictated by Justice. The metaphor is further propounded by calling Creon “thou, a mortal man”, stresses that not only is Creon a lesser issuer of law because he was mortal, but because he was a man. This apparent insolence was not lost upon Creon, who retorts: Creon But this proud girl, in insolence well-schooled, First overstepped the established law, and then— A second and worse act of insolence— She boasts and glories in her wickedness. Now if she thus can flout authority Unpunished, I am woman, she the man … Die then, and love the dead if thou must; No woman shall be the master while I live. With these words, Creon seals the fate of Antigone. It must be noted that while the original offense Antigone was charged with was because she defied the law, she was ultimately sentenced to death because Creon was insulted that a woman should argue against him. He wanted to teach her, and womankind, a lesson, that such audacity merits a graver punishment than that commanded by law. In fact, the offense of Antigone is mentioned in the play as punishable by stoning – a quick death; and yet, Creon sentenced her to a more cruel penalty, that of being buried alive and suffering a slow and gradual death. (Singh, 2003) The theme of femininity and power has been commented on in The Greek Myths by Robert Graves. In volume 1, Introduction, Graves observes: Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery. Seemingly, Graves appears to be debunking the contentions of Creon in the play; that is, he appears to support the idea that women occupy a position of power. On the contrary, by the title “Great Goddess” Graves was describing Athene, whose birth is described further in the Greek Myths. In the subchapter Zeus and Metis, volume 1: J. E. Harrison rightly described the story of Athene’s birth from Zeus’s head as “a desperate theological expedient to rid her of her matriarchal conditions. It is also a dogmatic insistence on wisdom as a male prerogative; hitherto the Goddess alone had been wise.” Here Athene was born out of Zeus’ head, and thus is “Zeus’s obedient mouthpiece, and deliberately surpress her [true] antecedents. She employs priests, not priestesses.” (Graves, 1955) This affirms that Athene is tolerated in a powerful role only because she is a mirror of Zeus. (Giancola, 2001) THE TRIUMPH OF DIVINE JUSTICE One other theme of Antigone is the eventual triumph of divine retribution over human injustice. In the supplication of Teiresias to Creon for the latter to change his mind, it says: Not many times shall run their race, before Thou shalt have given the fruit of thine own loins In quittance of thy murder, life for life; For that thou hast entombed a living soul, And sent below a denizen of earth, And wronged the nether gods by leaving here A corpse unlaved, unwept, unsepulchered. Herein thou hast no part, nor e’en the gods In heaven; and thou usurp’st a power not thine. For this the avenging spirits of Heaven and Hell Who dog the steps of sin are on thy trail: What these have suffered thou shalt suffer too. Obvious here is the irony that Creon has wrought in distorting divine law. He ordered the entombment of Antigone who lives, while refused the dead Polyneices the same. For the Greeks this is a mockery of a sacred rite that allows the soul to enter the afterlife. Creon’s show of hubris does not go unnoticed by the gods, who forthwith punishes Creon with the death of his son and wife – twin penalties for twin offenses. (Willink, 2007) In delving into the worldly concept of justice, Plato discussed the persistence of injustice in mortal life. Injustice does not have any deliverance from evil for the unjust in this life. “The Republic” by Plato, Book X Nay, he said, in that case injustice, if fatal to the unjust, will not be so very terrible to him, for he will be delivered from evil. But I rather suspect the opposite to be the truth, and that injustice which, if it have the power, will murder others, keeps the murderer alive—aye, and well awake too; so far removed is her dwelling-place from being a house of death. For Plato, it appears, death for the unjust agent is actually deliverance from evil, thus it is greater punishment for him to remain alive on earth while other around him perish from the result of his injustice. Obviously, Plato referred to “others” who were not the object of the injustice, so much as “others” whom the unjust did not intend any ill, others for whom he has devoted affection and, because they are fatally affected, forms part of his punishment. In Antigone, this is seen in the continued existence of Creon and the death of his wife and son. His family became unwitting payment for the injustice he had done to Antigone and her brother. Conclusion Sophocles presents in Antigone an interesting treatise of justice. Firstly, judgment is rendered based not on man’s law, but moral law, and the latter takes precedence over the former. Secondly, man’s law, to be a valid instrument of justice, must not be subject to the whims and caprice of the lawgiver, but must be restrained and impartial. Finally, where injustice is wrought by human law, divine justice finds retribution by punishing the unjust ruler through the effects his evil brings upon his own house. References Graves, R. The Greek Myths. Plato, The Republic. Sophocles, Antigone. Classics Technology Center, Antigone, Able Media.com. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/antigone.htm Giancola, D. M. (2001) “Justice and the Face of the Great Mother (East and West)”, Paideia, Comparative Philosophy. Retrieved July 17, 2009 from http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp /CompGian.htm Rehm, R. (2006) “Sophocles’ Antigone and Family Values”, Helios, vol. 33S, pp. 187-218, Texas Tech University Press Roselli, D. K. (2006) “Polyneices’ Body and His Monument: Class, Social Status, and Funerary Commemoration in Sophocles’ Antigone,” Helios, vol. 33S, pp. 135-177, Texas Tech University Press. Shmoop Literature. Antigone Symbolism, Imagery. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.shmoop.com/antigone-sophocles/symbolism-imagery.html Singh, F. B. (2003) “Antigone’s Changed Punishment: Gynaecology as Penology in Sophocles’ Antigone”, Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 18, No. 40, pp. 7-16 Willink, C. W. (2007) “Sophocles, Antigone 23-5 and the Burial of Eteocles”, Mnemosyne, vol. 60, pp. 274-280. Read More