The moral lesson of Antigone is that the law of the gods is higher than human law. Any human law that violates divine law is a sin. Antigone is right to disobey Creon's immoral law forbidding the burial of Polynices.
When Creon sentences her to death for offering Polynices proper burial rites, Antigone tells him he will be held responsible for unjustly killing her. Haemon, Creon's son and Antigone's fiancé, also pleads with his father to consider that he is going too far and becoming a tyrant in sentencing Antigone to death for following her conscience. Tiresias tells Creon the Furies will descend to avenge her death if Creon insists on his immoral path in executing his niece. Finally, the chorus weighs in to reiterate that the laws of the gods transcend human law and cannot be violated without punishment.
Creon pardons Antigone too late, after she has hanged herself. As a consequence, he loses his son and wife to suicide. With their deaths, all meaning leaves his life, and he can do nothing but hope to die.
The play is a cautionary tale about the boundaries of human power. Kings are extremely powerful, but that does not give them the right to violate divine law. Dire consequences follow from overstepping moral limits.
In Antigone, what are some lessons that we can learn from Antigone's act of bravery?
The lesson I learn from "Antigone" is that you have to be ready to accept the consequences of your convictions. Not only is she loyal to her brother and her religious beliefs, brave when confronted with danger and death, but she accepts the consequence (death) before she ever acts. The fact that she is so rational in the face of such an emotional ordeal is inspiring.
In Antigone, what are some lessons that we can learn from Antigone's act of bravery?
You might want to post this question in the discussion postings for this group to gain a wide range of responses. For me, this play is all about the conflict between our duties to the state of which we are a part and then our own personal duties and what happens when the two collide. Antigone is left between a rock and a hard place - if she is a loyal citizen, she betrays her family and sense of religion by not giving her brother the proper burial that he deserves, and yet if she follows her own conscience she is left as a traitor against the state, burying someone who rebelled against the rule of Creon. Creon and Antigone act as foils for each other throughout the play, as Creon seems to represent a system of rule that takes precedence over the importance of family, and Antigone, through her stubborn and tragic refusal to be cowed into ignoring her conscience, presents the opposite. Interestingly in this play, both stances are shown to lead to death, that Sophocles seems to suggest is the only way to resolve this dilemma.
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