To annotate a text means to mark it according to what you feel is important about it and to write notes responding to it in some way. For this exercise, you must think about women's roles in society in a particular excerpt from Sophocles's Antigone. To get you started, let's take a look at the text and see what it tells us about men and women in ancient Greece.

Antigone has been sentenced to death for disobeying Creon's orders and performing funeral rites for her brother. Antigone's sister, Ismene, wants to share in her guilt and punishment even though she would not share in her acts, but Antigone won't permit that. Antigone tells Ismene to save herself. These two women really have no power over their fate. Antigone laughs because she knows that. She tells her sister, "I belong to Death," personifying Death and giving in to the fate she realizes is hers.

Creon, hearing their conversation, is sarcastic when he tells the Chorus to "observe these girls." Both Antigone and Ismene are grown women, not girls. One of them "has just now lost her mind," Creon continues, and the other "has never had a mind at all." This is a cruel jest about Ismene and Antigone respectively, and it shows that Creon knows he has the power and they do not.

Ismene then reminds Creon that Antigone is supposed to marry his own son. Creon uses a metaphor in his response: "There are places enough for him to push his plow." In other words, there are other women to choose from. This is quite an offensive statement, of course, and Creon seems to have little respect for women in general.

The Chorus asks if Creon really means to steal Antigone from his own son. "No," says Creon, "Death will do that for me." He, too, personifies Death and shuffles the blame onto it. He then tells the guard to watch over the women, for they are only women and even brave men might run away from Death.

Creon then speaks an ode about the bleak fate of Oedipus's children. Again, he tries to get rid of any responsibility he has about Antigone's death, trying to convince himself that this is just another manifestation of the family's curse. Women are just as prone to it as men, but they have fewer resources with which to fight it.