Pasang Lama
ENG 1102
Prof. Cipriani
May 17, 2021
Creon’s reasoning to deny Polynices’ burial
Introduction:
The tragedy Antigone written by Sophocles is about a female named Antigone who longs for her brother Polynices to be buried. Before this story , Polynices and Eteocles , the brothers of Antigone , fought a lethal battle for the throne of their kingdom Thebes. They both died in the battle and Antigone’s uncle Creon was crowned the king. Creon believed that Polynices was a traitor and left Polynices to rot in the ground while he gave Eteocles a proper burial. Antigone was furious with the fact that Polynices was left to rot and knew this would anger the gods and Polynices would never find peace. She went to the body of Polyneices and tried to give him a proper burial herself until she was caught by King Creon. Furious by this act , King Creon sentences Antigone’s death. After this , a blind prophet sees death and horror in Creon’s future because of what he did to Antigone. Creon rushes to Antigone but finds that she has already hung herself . This makes Creon’s son Haemon , who was supposed to marry Antigone , commit suicide . Haemon’s suicide leads to Creon’s wifes’ suicide also. The story ends with Creon alone and no family to talk to.(Antigone Plot Summary, www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/tragedy/student%20second%20documents/oakes2.htm.)
After reading Antigone by the great playwright Sophocles , I had many questions I would’ve liked to ask him. My main question was why would Creon betray the word of god and deny the burial of his nephew Polynices? To answer this I would have to dig deeper into the play and what era the author came from.Sophocles was an amazing playwright . He wrote 123 dramas and was known as one of classical Athens’s three great tragic playwrights . He was born in 496 BCE , in Colonus,Greece. His father was a wealthy armor manufacturer and because of this Sophocles had a good education. In 468 he competed in dramatic festivals against great playwrights like Aeschylus and Euripides. He won many of them and cemented himself as the best playwright. In 440 BCE , he was selected to the stratēgoi (high executive officials who commanded the armed forces) because of his good education , status and impact in his community. Throughout his life he was granted special permission to deal with Athens’ finances. In 406 , he led a chorus for the death of his rival , Euripides. He died the same year. Sophocles was an educated , wealthy and powerful man who wrote many plays for the people of Greece but also had so much power that he also was commanding the army. ( “Sophocles.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica,inc www.britannica.com/biography/Sophocles.)
Source Entries:
Rosivach, Vincent J. “ON CREON, ‘ANTIGONE’ AND NOT BURYING THE DEAD.” Rheinisches Museum Für Philologie, vol. 126, no. 3/4, 1983, pp. 193–211. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41233483.
The thesis of this source is that it was a common and well known rule that the Greeks would give burials to the dead. However, it was rare to deny the burial of the dead. This article sheds light to why Creon denied Polynices’ burial and the unique piece of Antigone and brilliance of Sophocles’ since the play was written in its time period and was influenced heavily around that time period. Athenians looked down on criminals. Particularly robbers and traitors and would deny them a proper burial to the gods. This could give Creon a reason to deny the proper burial of Polyneices.
Petras, D. (2013).A will unbroken. City Tech Writer, 8, 32-33, https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/city-tech-writer-sampler/files/2019/07/Petras-2013.pdf
The thesis of this source is that the play Antigone focuses on the concept of the individual versus the state. An example of this is when Antigone confesses to Creon about the denial of the burial of her brother Polynices. Antigone being the individual and Creon being the state. Creon says that because Polynices led a rebellion against Thebes , he denies his right to be buried and publicly shames his legacy by branding him a traitor .
Conclusion:
The play Antigone is a historical piece that shows how times were in Ancient Greece and the common concept of individual vs state. The brilliant Sophocles wanted to show what had happened if religion was rejected. All people were meant to be buried ,to be sent to god in the afterlife and because Creon had denied Polynices’ burial, his family is now gone.
