Nature of Justice -- Secular or Divine?

Nature of Justice -- Secular or Divine?

Comparative Essay

The comparison of Antigone and Dante's Inferno is interesting as they are really quite different in style, tone, context, and story type. Both stories address the choices made by mankind, and the allegiances that people form and that impact their actions. Dante is in charge of the telling in his story, but Antigone must suffer through the interpretations, telling, and retelling of her story and that of her opponent.

Antigone. Third of the three Theban plays, Antigone is a tragedy attributed to Sophocles circa 442 BC. Of the three plays set in the city of Thebes, Antigone was created first but is chronologically the last in the stream of events. Establishing the premises related to the characters in the story is dominant in the first part of the play, then the action relentlessly advances toward the outcome, which the reader assumes or knows will be Antigone's death. Antigone's immediate problem is that she has defied Creon and buried her brother against his orders. The debate that follows pivots around adherence to justice, questions about the king's right to disallow a burial, and Antigone's right to defy Creon's decree in light of her status in the palace and her kinship. Creon ruled that Polneices should not be buried as recognition that he is no longer to be treated as a full-fledged citizen of Thebes -- the burial is at once symbolic and practical, since cities were responsible for burying their own dead citizens. Sophocles makes the point in Antigone that there is more than one form of law -- man's laws and the laws of the gods -- and only one form of the law can be greater. Sophocles casts his vote with the gods and, through his story, attempts to warn Athens away from their hubris and destructive ways.

The tone of the play is sympathetic and tragic, foreboding and ironic (because the ending of the play would have been known to the audience through mythology). The Chorus has substantive impact on the tone, as there is not a single narrator, and because the Chorus seems genuinely sympathetic at times, though they never let the audience drift too far from the inevitable ending. Though considered a Greek tragedy, the contemporary genre of Antigone is drama. The play is continually suspenseful as conflict is maintained through the twists and turns. The perspective and points-of-view of Antigone and Creon are evident in their attitudes toward the law (and whose law?), loyalty and betrayal, and an overarching reverence for the dead and the sacred rites of burial. Antigone's rigid stance -- even in the face of certain death -- is characteristic of the general tone in Greece at the time the play was written, as religion and military were the two dominant forces over quotidian life. A religious or a militaristic orientation to life would have necessarily been founded on self-sacrifice and unquestioning obedience to the laws of the institutions. Antigone's putting aside of her own interests would have been acceptable -- perhaps even expected -- for the times. Creon is located on the other end of the scale with a self-serving attitude and a constancy that swings in the wind, ever seeking advantage.

The language is elegant and lyrical: Now the long blade of the sun, lying level east to west touches with glory Thebes of the Seven Gates. Open unlidded eye of the golden day! And in several instances, alliteration seems to have survived translation: Is brazen boasting of barefaced anarchy? Symbolism comes to life in Antigone in the characters themselves. The conflict between Antigone and Creon is deep-seated as it includes tension between male and female overlain by family loyalty and ties vs. The duty of citizens. Bird imagery is predominant in Antigone, from the carrion-eating birds attending the dead body of Polyneices to Antigone as a protective bird hovering over the body of her dead brother. Further references are made to birds that seem to represent the mess that Creon has made of everything -- in fact, the birds are themselves very messy and Teiresias provides the details through his magic art of augury, which is basically the telling of the future from the behavior of birds.