Better to fall from power, if fall we
must,
at the hands of a man—never be rated
inferior to a woman, never.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary
The Chorus sees Creon’s son Haemon approaching and wonders what
he thinks of Antigone’s arrest. When Creon questions him about his
loyalties, Haemon replies that no woman is as important as his father
and that he will obey Creon. Pleased, the king praises his son’s
wisdom. Haemon reports that he has heard it said among the people
that Antigone does not deserve such punishment for her noble-seeming
deed. He implores his father not to be so sure of his rightness.
Insulted by the idea that his citizens should tell him how to rule,
Creon vigorously defends his absolute authority, and Haemon responds
that Creon is stubborn and proud. Creon, enraged, reels off insults
at his son, calling him disrespectful and the slave of a woman.
Haemon responds forcefully, and even darkly hints that Creon’s murder
of Antigone may cause the death of another person. Creon calls for
Antigone to be brought out and murdered in front of her groom, but
Haemon exclaims that his father will see him no longer and rushes
off. Once his son is gone, Creon concedes that he will not kill
Ismene, but he promises a living death for Antigone: he will enclose
her, alive, in a tomb.
Creon goes back into the palace, and the Chorus sings
of the power of love, which cannot be defeated by arms, and which
can drive a sane man mad. When Antigone approaches, the Chorus announces
that even it would rebel upon seeing the pitiful girl being led
from the palace to her tomb. Antigone tells the elders her death will
be noble, but the Chorus doubts her, regarding her nobility as pride.
Antigone raves when the Chorus compares her to her father, and she
cries out against the fortunes of herself and her family. Creon
comes out of the palace, insists that Antigone is protesting too
much, and tells the guards to take her to her tomb. Before leaving,
Antigone gives one last defense: she would not have defied Creon
if the unburied corpse were her husband’s or her child’s, for either
could be replaced. Only for a sibling whose parents are dead, the
last son of the terrible house of Oedipus, is she willing to accept such
punishment. As she is taken away, she cries out that Thebes is ruled
by cowards who punish her for revering the gods. Antigone is taken
to her tomb, and the Chorus sings an ode describing the mythological
figures who have shared Antigone’s fate, walled alive in tombs.
Analysis
The Chorus and Creon both anticipate that Haemon will
resist his father’s decree, because they both know the power of
eros, or erotic love, a topic introduced in this section. We can
infer from Haemon’s rage, his hints at suicide, and from the Chorus’s
ode on love that Haemon is indeed in the grip of passion. Even so,
Haemon’s arguments with Creon are rational. He says that reason
is a gift of the gods, and he cautions Creon against being single-minded
and self-involved, noting that there is no such thing as a one-man
city. He asserts that everyone has to give way somewhat, listen,
and change, and that no one is infallible. The Leader of the Chorus
advises them to listen to each other, but Creon, although he as
much as admits that he’s a tyrant, refuses to be lectured. Haemon’s
and the Chorus’s arguments against Creon’s tyranny would have appealed
to the democratic spirit of Sophocles’ Athenian audience.
Given the play’s themes so far, one would not necessarily
expect the chorus to say that love is what has caused the play’s
strife. The Love Ode implies that perhaps neither Haemon nor Creon
is really motivated by practical reason or right judgment, and that
one or both is in the grip of blind passion. The chorus develops
its earlier theme that humans should be humble, characterizing love
as a force that is more powerful than “wondrous” man. Later,
in the ode that describes Danae and other mythological figures,
the Chorus describes people who have been sealed up in tombs while
still alive. It uses what happened to these characters as a metaphor
for fate, which traps all of us, in the sense that we aren’t in
control of our destinies.
It might be argued that love is one of the greater goods
that the state exists to enable people to pursue—one of the greater
goods that Creon overlooks when he argues that the well-being of
the state is the highest good in human life. Creon argues that since
Haemon’s will should be subject to his, Haemon should not experience
any conflict of loyalties. He goes on to contend that Haemon shouldn’t even
be attracted to Antigone if she is an enemy of the state. As he has
throughout the play, Creon denies that ethical conflicts can arise,
or that ethical decisions sometimes require deliberation. He insists
upon remaining consistent with the views he has already stated,
and asserts that he will not make himself a liar. Again, he commits
sacrilege, dismissively referring to her hymns to Zeus.
Antigone’s final speech is very strange. She says that
she would not have suffered her ordeal for a husband but will suffer
it for her brother because he is not replaceable. Yet we must remember
that she is martyring herself for a dead brother, not, as she suggests,
for a live one. Her final, puzzling speech may suggest that her
value judgments have become distorted.
