oedipus rex

Summary

Night has fallen in Thebes. The preceding days have borne witness to the armed struggle between Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus and brothers to Antigone and Ismene. The brothers, who were fighting for control of Thebes, have now died at each other’s hands. Polynices’ invading army has retreated, and Creon now rules the city. Antigone approaches an altar in the palace, bemoaning the death of her brothers. Ismene follows close behind, echoing Antigone’s sentiments.

Antigone laments Creon’s recent decree that whoever tries to bury or mourn Polynices must be put to death. Although Ismene declares that the sisters lack any power in the situation, Antigone insists that she will bury Polynices, and asks for Ismene’s help. Ismene contends that though she loves Polynices, she must follow the king’s decree—she does not want to risk punishment by death. Antigone rejects Ismene’s arguments, saying that she holds honor and love higher than law and death. Antigone exits, still resolved to bury Polynices. Ismene declares that she will always love Antigone, and then withdraws into the palace.

The Chorus, composed of the elders of Thebes, comes forward. It sings an ode praising the glory of Thebes and denouncing the proud Polynices, who nearly brought the city to ruin. Creon then enters, assuring the citizens that order and safety have returned to Thebes. He announces that Eteocles, who defended Thebes, will receive a hero’s burial, unlike his brother, who shall rot in godless shame for having raised arms against the city. The Chorus says that it will obey Creon’s edict.

A sentry enters with a message for the king, but he hesitates to speak for fear of the king’s reaction. Creon orders him to tell his story, and he finally reports the scandalous news. Someone has given proper burial rites to Polynices’ corpse, and no one knows who has done it. Unsure what to do, the sentries assigned to keep watch over the grave finally resolve to tell the king. The Chorus suggests that the gods themselves may have undertaken Polynices’ burial, but Creon denounces this notion as absurd, arguing that the gods would never side with a traitor. He himself theorizes that dissidents in the city have bribed one of the sentries to defy his edict, and he accuses the present sentry of the crime. Refusing to listen to the sentry’s desperate denials, Creon threatens the sentry with death if no other suspect is found, and then enters the palace. The sentry declares his intention to leave Thebes forever, and flees.

The Chorus sings an ode about how man dominates the earth and how only death can master him. But it warns that man should use his powers only in accordance with the laws of the land and the justice of the gods; society cannot tolerate those who exert their will to reckless ends.

Analysis

The opening events of the play quickly establish the central conflict. Creon has decreed that the traitor Polynices must not be given proper burial, and Antigone is the only one who will speak against this decree and insist on the sacredness of family. Whereas Antigone sees no validity in a law that disregards the duty family members owe one another, Creon’s point of view is exactly opposite. He has no use for anyone who places private ties above the common good, as he proclaims firmly to the Chorus and the audience as he revels in his victory over Polynices. Creon’s first speech, which is dominated by words such as “principle,” “law,” “policy,” and “decree,” shows the extent to which Creon fixates on government and law as the supreme authority. Between Antigone and Creon there can be no compromise—they both find absolute validity in the respective loyalties they uphold.

In the struggle between Creon and Antigone, Sophocles’ audience would have recognized a genuine conflict of duties and values. In their ethical philosophy, the ancient Athenians clearly recognized that conflicts can arise between two separate but valid principles, and that such situations call for practical judgment and deliberation. From the Greek point of view, both Creon’s and Antigone’s positions are flawed, because both oversimplify ethical life by recognizing only one kind of “good” or duty. By oversimplifying, each ignores the fact that a conflict exists at all, or that deliberation is necessary. Moreover, both Creon and Antigone display the dangerous flaw of pride in the way they justify and carry out their decisions. Antigone admits right from the beginning that she wants to carry out the burial because the action is “glorious.” Creon’s pride is that of a tyrant. He is inflexible and unyielding, unwilling throughout the play to listen to advice. The danger of pride is that it leads both these characters to overlook their own human finitude—the limitations of their own powers.

Read important quotes about Creon’s excessive pride.

Oddly enough, the comical, lower-class messenger is the only character to exhibit the uncertainty and careful weighing of alternatives required by practical judgment. The sentry has no fixed idea of an appropriate course of action. He says that as he was coming to deliver his message, he was lost in thought, turning back and forth, pondering the consequences of what he might say and do. The sentry’s comic wavering seems, at this point, like the only sensible way of acting in this society: unlike Creon or Antigone or even Ismene, the sentry considers the possible alternatives to his present situation. As a comic character, the sentry offsets the brutal force of Creon’s will. Whereas the conflict between Creon and Antigone is a violent clash of two opposing, forceful wills, Creon’s injustice is clearest when he promises to kill the sentry if the person responsible for Polynices’ burial is not found.

Read more about the sentry’s role in Anti

The two times the Chorus speaks in this section, it seems to side with Creon and the established power of Thebes. The Chorus’s first speech (117–179) describes the thwarted pride of the invading enemy: Zeus hates bravado and bragging. Yet this paean to the victory of Thebes through the graces of Zeus has a subtly critical edge. The Chorus’s focus on pride and the fall of the prideful comments underhandedly on the willfulness we have just seen in Antigone and will see in Creon. Few speeches in the Oedipus plays are more swollen with self-importance than Creon’s first speech, where he assumes the “awesome task of setting the city’s course” and reiterates his decree against the traitor Polynices (199).

Read an in-depth analysis of the Chorus.

The second choral ode begins on an optimistic note but becomes darker toward the end. This ode celebrates the “wonder” of man, but the Greek word for wonderful (deinon) has already been used twice in the play with the connotation of “horrible” or “frightening” (the messenger and Chorus use it to describe the mysterious burial of the body). The Chorus seems to praise man for being able to accomplish whatever goal he sets his sights on—crossing the sea in winter, snaring birds and beasts, taming wild horses. But the point of the ode is that while man may be able to master nature by developing techniques to achieve his goals, man should formulate those goals by taking into consideration the “mood and mind for law,” justice, and the common good. Otherwise, man becomes a monster.

In his first speech, Creon also uses imagery of mastery to describe the way he governs—he holds the “ship of state” on course (180). The logical problem with Creon’s rhetoric is that maintaining the ship cannot be the ultimate good or goal in life, as he seems to think. Ships travel with some further end in mind, not for the sake of traveling. Similarly, the stability of the state may be important, but only because that stability enables the pursuit of other human goals, such as honoring family, gods, and loved ones.

Summary

The Chorus sees the sentry who had resolved never to return approaching, now escorting Antigone. The sentry tells the Chorus that Antigone is the culprit in the illegal burial of Polynices and calls for Creon. When Creon enters, the sentry tells him that after he and the other sentries dug up the rotting body, a sudden dust storm blinded them. When the storm passed, they saw Antigone, who cursed them and began to bury the body again. The sentries seized her and interrogated her, and she denied nothing. When Creon asks her himself, Antigone again freely admits her culpability. Creon dismisses the sentry and asks Antigone if she knew of his edict forbidding her brother’s burial. Antigone declares that she knew the edict but argues that in breaking it she defied neither the gods nor justice, only the decree of an unjust man.

The Leader of the Chorus likens Antigone’s passionate wildness to her father’s. Creon, calling for the guards to bring Ismene, condemns both sisters to death. Antigone tells Creon that his moralizing speeches repel her, and that to die for having buried her brother honorably will bring her great glory. She tells him that all of Thebes supports her but fears to speak out against the king. Creon asks Antigone if she didn’t consider Polynices’ burial an insult to her other brother, Eteocles, for the two fought as enemies. Antigone insists that both deserved proper burials, regardless of their political affiliations. She says that her nature compels her to act according to love and not to bear grudges. Creon rebuffs her, saying he will never allow a woman to tell him what to do.

Ismene emerges from the palace, weeping, and says that she will share the guilt with her sister. Antigone refuses to let her do this, arguing that she acted alone and insulting Ismene for her cowardice. Creon declares both sisters mad, and again condemns them to death. Ismene attempts to save Antigone by appealing to Creon’s love for his son, Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone. But Creon stands firm, as the idea of seeing his son married to a traitor repulses him. Creon orders his guards to bind the sisters and take them away.

The Chorus sings an ode lamenting the fortunes of the house of Oedipus, which once again stands mired in death and sorrow. The Chorus prays to Zeus, guardian of kinship ties, whose law prevails above all others.

Analysis

Antigone and Creon’s direct confrontation further clarifies the nature of their disagreement. Antigone attacks Creon’s edicts on the grounds that his interpretation of justice and the will of Zeus is invalid. She may be correct in her assessment, but in saying so she assumes the power to independently interpret justice and the will of the gods, just as Creon did. Her accusations are wild and reckless, and she seems to be trying to seize glory like the bravados the chorus condemned in their first ode.

Read an in-depth analysis of Antigone.

Nevertheless, our sympathies are most likely tipping toward Antigone in this encounter. Just before the argument between Antigone and Creon, the sentry gives a vivid and disgusting description of the disinterment of Polynices’ corpse. Polynices’ rotting body is the physical evidence, or perhaps a symbol, of the injustice of Creon’s decree and of the ruin it will bring about in Thebes. The description of the degradation of the corpse prepares the audience to be sympathetic to Antigone’s arguments, even as she flies in the face of law with a pride that easily matches Creon’s. Antigone draws a distinction between divine law and human law, between the “great unwritten, unshakable traditions” and the edicts of individual rulers such as Creon (502–503).

Read important quotes about the law as a theme from Antigone.

When Creon responds to Antigone’s recklessness, he speaks of breaking and taming her (528–548). His words echo those of the second choral ode. Although, according to the Chorus, breaking and taming is what humans do to nature, it’s not clear that Creon is “weav[ing] in / the laws of the land and the justice of the god” into his goal of breaking Antigone, as the second choral ode dictates must occur. Blood ties seem to mean nothing to Creon, who commits sacrilege against Zeus when he dismisses his blood tie to Antigone by saying that he would reject his entire family if they were huddled together at Zeus’s altar. He insists he would punish Antigone even if she were a closer blood relative (543–545), and he quite arbitrarily decides at that point to punish Ismene as well. Creon’s rage at Antigone’s “insolence” (536) entirely consumes him, and he acts with a rashness terrifying to all who have heard him claim to hold steady control of the “ship of state.”

Creon’s anger is notably directed toward the fact that he is being challenged by women. When he first meets with Antigone, he says that if she gets away with her actions, she will be “the man” rather than him (541). And after he has condemned the sisters to death, he tells his guards to keep them from running loose and tie them up, so that they will act like women (652–653). In Creon’s view, Antigone has overstepped the bounds of her positions as a citizen and as a human being. Antigone, of course, has none of these worldly concerns. She is prepared to die for what she believes is the right action in the eyes of the gods.

The third choral ode is more pessimistic than those before it. The Chorus takes Antigone’s trespass and capture as an occasion to lament the misfortunes of Oedipus’s house. It goes on (famously) to conclude that once ruin strikes a family, it continues ceaselessly through generations—no person has the power to reverse the pattern of misery and devastation. Power, the Chorus tells us, really belongs in hands of the gods, of Zeus. This third ode clarifies the second by showing that for all his seeming marvels and wonders, man is not actually powerful at all, as the disastrous fate of Oedipus’s family shows. The ode concludes with the warning that when disaster strikes, it may be in the form of a “fraud” that steals on one slowly. A human being can wander into a situation in which he’s wrong about everything, courting disaster. The admonishing nature of this ode seems to be subtly directed toward Creon, although we may only pick up on this in hindsight.

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.

Read an important quote by Haemon as he tries to talk sense into his father.

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.

Read important quotes by the Chorus about the theme of destiny.

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.

Summary

A boy leads in Tiresias, the blind soothsayer of Thebes. Creon swears that he will obey whatever advice Tiresias gives him, since he owes so much to his past advice. Tiresias tells him that his refusal to bury Polynices and his punishment of Antigone for the burial will bring the curses of the gods down on Thebes. Hearing this, Creon curses Tiresias, calling him a false prophet who traffics in poor advice and rhetoric. Creon accuses all prophets of being power-hungry fools, but Tiresias turns the insult back on tyrants like Creon. The old prophet argues that the rites for the dead are the concern of the gods—mortals can rule only in this world. Unwilling to hear any more abuse, Tiresias has his boy lead him away. The Chorus is terrified by Tiresias’s prophecy. Creon admits that he too is worried and will do whatever the citizens recommend. They call for him to free Antigone, and he reluctantly leaves to do so. Once he is gone, the Chorus prays to Dionysus to protect Thebes.

A messenger enters and tells the Chorus that a catastrophic event has taken place offstage: Haemon is dead by his own hand. As the messenger is leaving, Eurydice, Creon’s wife, enters from the palace. She has overheard the commotion caused by the messenger’s announcement and asks the messenger to tell her what has happened. He reports that just as Creon and his entourage had finished their burial of Polynices, they heard what sounded like Haemon’s voice wailing from Antigone’s tomb. They went in and saw Antigone hanging from a noose and Haemon raving. Creon’s son then took a sword and thrust it at his father. Missing, he turned the sword against himself, and died embracing Antigone’s body.

Hearing that Haemon is dead, Eurydice rushes back into the palace, followed by the messenger. Creon then enters, carrying Haemon’s body and wailing against his own tyranny, which caused his son’s death. Just then the messenger emerges and tells the king that the queen has committed suicide, brought to unbearable misery by her son’s death. Creon weeps and raves wildly as Eurydice’s body is brought forth from the palace. The messenger tells Creon that Eurydice called down curses on her husband for the misery his pride had caused just before she stabbed herself. Creon kneels and prays for death. His guards lead him back into the palace. The Chorus sings a final ode about how the proud are brought low by the gods.

Analysis

Throughout the play, Creon has emphasized the importance of “healthy” practical judgment over a sick, twisted mind, but Tiresias informs Creon that practical judgment is precisely what he lacks—only Creon has a sick and twisted mind. When the catastrophes occur, the messenger directly points to the moral that the worst ill afflicting mortals is a lack of judgment (1373). We may well wonder what use judgment is given the limitations of human beings and the inescapable will of the gods. Perhaps the best explanation is that possessing wisdom and judgment means acknowledging human limitations and behaving piously so as not to actually call down the gods’ wrath. Humans must take a humble, reverential attitude toward fate, the gods, and the limits of human intelligence. At the end of the play, Creon shows he has learned this lesson at last when, instead of mocking death as he has throughout the play, he speaks respectfully of “death” heaping blows upon him (1413–1419).

Read important quotes about blindness in Antigone.

Even though Antigone exhibits a blamable pride and a hunger for glory, her transgressions are less serious than those of Creon. Antigone’s crime harms no one directly, whereas Creon’s mistakes affect an entire city. We learn from Tiresias that new armies are rising up in anger against Thebes because of Creon’s treatment of their dead (1201–1205). More important, Creon’s refusal to bury Polynices represents a more radical affront to human values than Antigone’s refusal to heed Creon’s edict. Creon says at the beginning of the play that the sight of Polynices’ unburied corpse is an obscenity (231), but he clearly doesn’t understand the implications of his own words. Whereas Antigone breaks a law made by a particular ruler in a particular instance, a law that he could have made differently, Creon violates an unwritten law, a cultural custom.

Read more about the power of the unwritten law as a theme in Antigone.

The Chorus’s final speech is a remarkably terse list of possible lessons that can be learned from the play’s events: wisdom is good, reverence for the gods is necessary, pride is bad, and fate is inevitable (1466–1470). The Chorus claims that the punishing blows of fate will teach men wisdom, but it is hard to feel convinced by their words: Creon’s “wisdom”—his understanding of his crimes—seems, much like Oedipus’s, only to have brought him more pain. And Haemon, Antigone, and Eurydice can learn nothing more, now that they are dead. The Chorus, like the audience, struggles to find purpose in violence, though it is not clear that there is any purpose to be found.