Antigone: An Ancient Play With Modern Political Sensibilities

The Ancient Greek Tragedy from the 5th Century B.C.E. proves King Solomon right in his refrain there is 'nothing new under the sun'

Circa 2020, Auburn, AL.

Teaching literature for a living offers a perspective often not readily available to other professions. For starters, interpreting literature requires constancy of imagination. Each day, I am required to try my best to inhabit the consciousness of men and women, kings and serfs, pilgrims, and executioners—all from eras drastically different from our own. There’s quite a chasm between Sophocles and Fitzgerald, and Virgil and Vonnegut aren’t exactly cousins.

Perhaps the most perilous aspect of this work is the attempt to ascribe meaning to an author who has long since died and can offer no insight into what he or she means. And the longer the author has ceased living, the longer one must study to derive the original intent.

Realistically, scholars and teachers alike inevitably come to the realization that even if we dedicated our entire lives to the pursuit of knowledge in one niche subject area, we would still merely scratch the surface by the end.

However, a delightful occurrence occasionally occurs in pursuing knowledge — the emergence of a universal theme or truth.

I tread lightly here because few things are truly universal. The world our 21st-century consciousnesses inhabit would be unintelligible to a 13th-century serf or a 5th-century BC Greek playwright.

With technological, political, and cultural changes, portions of our consciousness are altered irreversibly.

An example of this is our modern perception of nature.¹ The modern understanding of natural objects such as a tree or rock is that they are inanimate objects. These inanimate natural objects can be manipulated for the uses of humans, but standing on their own, there are no intrinsic elements of vitality.

Folks in the ancient world would not have seen natural objects through this lens. To a shepherd boy coming of age in 7th century Judea, the rock was a living object; the tree was a colossal enterprise.

I dwell upon this difference merely to establish that while the universality of the human experience is at times apparent, it is rare.

Finding a common thread

Therefore, as I began to unpack the Ancient Greek Tragedy Antigone to my students, I wanted to tread lightly. Not only is the play written by Sophocles 2500 plus years old but it is also written in an Ancient Greek dialect quite different from the modern English spoken by my students. Last time I checked there were not many mentions of Skibidi Toliets found in Sophocles’ meter.

As a result, I was skeptical of finding much universality in the text, especially not of the sort that could be easily related to my students.

Yet, as I dove into Robert Fitzgerald’s wonderfully translated version, I was immediately struck by the universality and intelligibility of Sophocles’ ideas — even to, and perhaps especially to, the 21st-century reader.

In my classes, I use a Socratic method of lecturing, where I challenge students to draw thematic, literary, and historical connections to occurrences found in other eras of history and literature.

About halfway through my first lecture, I quickly became aware that a certain universal chord had been struck in Antigone.

Below is a list of several universal parallels we identified throughout a two-week study of Antigone. I will leave it up to you, reader, to spot the modern cultural and political equivalents and to make your own judgment as to whether or not such themes are truly universal.

1. In the prologue, Antigone is distraught because the new King, Creon, has issued an edict making it illegal for her to bury her brother Polyneices. Creon clearly knows that such a law will violate Antigone’s religious obligation to perform burial rights for her brother. By issuing such a degree, Creon is asserting the State’s priorities supersede religious liberties.² He is also setting odds between the laws of the Oikos (household) and Polis (city), making it impossible to obey one without a direct violation of the other.

2. Unbeknownst to Creon, Antigone defies the edict and gives her brother a proper burial. Upon hearing the news, Creon immediately blames the Sentry, who is merely a messenger delivering the news that the body has been stolen and buried. He accuses the Sentry of being disloyal and taking bribes. Creon has no evidence of the sentry’s wrongdoing, but quickly turns vengeful, threatening imminent death to the Sentry if a culprit is not found. As an aside, this is Creon’s first week in office and he is already possessed by wild suspicions and arbitrary loyalty tests.

3. Creon’s original argument in refusing the burial of Polyneices was based on the case that although Polyneices was the former king’s son, he was a traitor and anarchist. Although the play does not give much background, Creon makes it clear that he will have absolutely no tolerance for any form of action that could be seen as compromising the state. He shows that any such action will require severe retribution despite what popular opinion of the polis may be.

4. When Creon is confronted by his son Haimon, who asks for clemency for Antigone’s actions in burying the body, Creon makes a slippery slope argument that if he pardons her, nobody else will listen to his authority in the future. However, this lack of a pardon is particularly harsh when the reader learns that the king’s very son, Haimon, is betrothed to Antigone and will be left without a bride if the king carries on his promise. Creon is especially sensitive to the fact that an act of such magnitude toward a family member would look particularly bad for his law and order agenda.

5. In a second plea for clemency, Haimon appeals to Creon using evidence that the polis does not agree with his decision to put Antigone to death for her defiance. The King refuses to listen to counsel or the polis, asserting that he is the voice of the people, regardless of whether the people agree with his judgment or not.³

The list could go on and on. Antigone provides no shortage of fertile examples that press into the folly of hubris and the lack of wisdom amid those who falsely claim civic virtue.

I point this out not to get weirdly political or to shed light on the failings of recent or current presidential administrations. Rather, I write with a somewhat ironic sentiment in that despite all the talk of progress bridging the chasm between the time of Sophocles and the modern day, certain universals always have and always will hold true.

1. This sentiment is well documented in Owen Barfield’s book Saving Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.

2. I am giving a surface-level summary here. However, scholars such as Hegel have spent much labor in unpacking the competing interests of the Polis and Oikos.

3. The Antigone of Sophocles: An English Version by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, Harcourt, Brace, 1939