Antigone by Sophocles – The Duty of Love and the Cost of Defiance

Antigone by Sophocles – The Duty of Love and the Cost of Defiance

By a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

Book Nine of the Bucket List Book Adventure,  Antigone by Sophocles, is finished, and what a story it is.

Sophocles wrote Antigone around 441 BC, and it was performed that same year at the Festival of Dionysus. It’s the second oldest of his surviving plays (after Ajax), written about thirty-five years before Oedipus at Colonus, though the story takes place afterward.

The play opens in the women’s quarters of the royal palace in Thebes. The civil war is over, and both of Antigone’s brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, are dead, having killed each other in battle. Their uncle Creon now rules the city.

“No generation can free the next.” – Sophocles, Antigone.

Creon has ordered that Eteocles be buried with honor but that Polynices’s body be left unburied, a warning to any who would betray the state. Antigone cannot accept this injustice. Defying both the law and her sister Ismene’s pleas, she resolves to bury her brother herself, an act of familial duty and divine obedience.

She performs the burial in secret, but the deed is discovered. Brought before Creon, Antigone refuses to deny her actions. She insists that her duty to the gods outweighs any man-made decree.

“You wish to speak but never wish to hear.” – Sophocles, Antigone

Creon tries to reason with her, urging her to live, marry his son Haemon, and put the matter behind her. But Antigone will not yield. In his pride and anger, Creon condemns her to be sealed alive inside a tomb, a living woman entombed while her brother’s corpse lies unburied outside.

The balance of life and death is shattered. The natural order, so central to Greek thought, has been inverted.

Then the curse unfolds. Haemon rushes to the tomb, but it’s too late; Antigone has taken her own life. In despair, he falls on his sword. When word reaches the palace, Creon’s wife Eurydice kills herself as well.

In the end, Creon is left broken, a warning to all who let pride outrun wisdom.

“Stubbornness and stupidity are twins.” – Sophocles, Antigone

This play struck a deep chord with me, mainly because of my work with the Old Lick Cemetery and my reflections on St. Joseph of Arimathea, both of which are tied to the sacred act of burial. Antigone’s insistence that the dead deserve dignity, no matter their sins or politics, feels timeless.

Sophocles used Antigone’s defiance not just to challenge gender expectations, but to confront the idea of moral law itself —what is right beyond what is legal. In making a woman the voice of conscience, he magnified the arrogance and blindness of Creon’s authority.

Unlike Oedipus, whose tragedy came from ignorance, Creon’s downfall came from willful stubbornness and the refusal to listen.

And Sophocles was right: that kind of stubbornness really does have a twin.

Next up is Philoctetes, another of Sophocles’s plays set during the Trojan War. I’ll tell you all about it soon.

xoxo,

a.d. elliott

*Note* The Bucket List Book Adventure continues on Rite of Fancy — my literary corner of the Take the Back Roads journey.  Come read more reflections on philosophy, faith, and the books that shape the road.

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a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller living in Salem, Virginia. 

In addition to her travel writings at www.takethebackroads.com, you can also read her book reviews at www.riteoffancy.com and US military biographies at www.everydaypatriot.com

Her online photography gallery can be found at shop.takethebackroads.com

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