Antigone Along With Its Companion

Antigone

Along with its companion plays Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles' Antigone is one of the best known Greek tragedies, and as such offers the ideal text with which to highlight some of the more important elements of Greek tragedy in general, especially those outlined by Aristotle in his Poetics. In the Poetics, Aristotle argues that tragedy can be broken down into a series of conditions which must be met in order to consider something good tragedy, including the centrality of plot over character, the presence of a tragic flaw or mistake on the part of the main character, the necessity that the play reveal some moral or ethical truth, the use of stylistic language to convey these truths in characters' speech, and the close integration of the chorus into the plot of the play. By looking at plot, character, and speech in Antigone, one is able to better understand some of these necessary elements and the way in which they influence and shape the play's status Greek tragedy.

Aristotle argues that the most central defining element of a tragedy is its plot, which must follow "a person who is neither a paragon of virtue or integrity, nor one who falls into misfortune owing to moral depravity, but does so owing to a mistake" or tragic flaw (Aristotle 178). Thus, the plot of a tragedy must concern itself with representing the reversal of fortune of the main character, and this reversal is seen in Antigone when the titular character is condemned to be buried alive by Creon, in punishment for "her proud contempt" (Sophocles line 546). This point also marks a reversal of fortune for Creon, who, like Antigone, suffers the consequences of hubris, although Creon's punishment is meted out via the death of his son Haemon (Sophocles line 1194).

As mentioned before, plot is the most important element of Greek tragedy, and everything else ultimately serves to reinforce and reiterate the plot. Thus, while the characters may have detailed psyches and internal struggles, those psyches must serve to plot, and as such the "speech or conduct" of characters must be in line with their role within the larger story, so that "even if the character portrayed be fitful, and such a character be the theme, it ought to be uniformly fitful" (Aristotle 185-186). The characters of Antigone and Creon both demonstrate this crucial element well, because although they both demonstrate rich emotional lives, they are nonetheless defined by their tragic flaws which constitute their larger purpose within the story. In fact, Creon and Antigone's tragic flaws are deeply related, and this relation further demonstrates the centrality of plot to the play, thus reinforcing the most important element of Greek tragedy.

While Creon's admonishments of Antigone likely stem from the fact that she is a woman who has deign to disobey him, the fact remains that Antigone is openly defiant of official authority, as her love for her family trumps any responsibilities she might have to following the law (Sophocles line 600). As a character, Creon is almost and inverse of Antigone, because his concern for his own authority trumps his love for his own family, as he all but disowns his son Haemon for the latter's support of Antigone. As these flaws are the most important elements of characterization in terms of the plot, they essentially define the characters even in spite of the interior emotional lives hinted at within the play.

As speech is the primary way in which the plot is conveyed to the audience, Aristotle argues that a tragedy must contain effective language and metaphors in order to both relay direct information about the plot as well as shape the reception of that plot through the use of a particular style. Aristotle favors metaphor above all else, as he claims that "to coin metaphors with skill means ability to see the likeness in things," and thus reveal something essential about both elements of the metaphor (Aristotle 210). In Antigone Creon has some of the most forceful metaphors, such as when he calls Ismene a "snake lurking in my house, / sucking out my life's blood so secretly" (Sophocles lines 607-608). This use of metaphor says as much about Creon as Ismene, and Antigone frequently includes powerful metaphors like this in order to make its larger point about the balance between state authority and familial dedication. Creon even acknowledges the importance of metaphor and speech to Greek tragedy when he states that "among human beings / the wisest suffer a disgraceful fall / when, to promote themselves, they use fine words / to spread around abusive insults" (Sophocles lines 1167-1169). Creon is actually guilty of this himself, but the irony which arises from his chastising Tiresias for it highlights the importance of metaphor in speech to the genre.