One element that makes Antigone timelessly relevant is the play's conflict between Creon and Antigone, both figures who hold to absolute values. In Creon's case, the rule of law is an absolute value. In Antigone's, the demand of the gods and the tradition that families must bury their dead are absolute values.
While this conflict pits social morality against personal morality, the tragedy ensues because both Creon and Antigone are unable to see an alternative to their absolute commitment of the values they hold highest. Neither character "wins" a moral victory in this case, and both are damaged. One could even argue that while Antigone is the most obvious tragic figure, Creon is also a profoundly tragic figure. His determination to be right and prove Antigone wrong enmeshes his son Haemon, who kills himself over his love for Antigone. In turn, Creon's wife, Eurydice, kills herself in grief over...
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Haemon's death. In both cases, Antigone and Creon "miss the mark" set by their ideal values and bring others to despair and destruction. Neither society nor the gods are well served by their choices.
Our current situation offers numerous examples of people so blinded by absolute commitment to an ideal of politics or religion that they become damaging to themselves, others, and the ideal. Party politics in the United States and across the world find people of otherwise good will hellbent on proving themselves right and winning what seems like a moral victory that they become immoral in their actions. Failing to recognize a middle path that gives dignity to the laws of the state as well as the laws of the gods, both Antigone and Creon speak for a brittle morality that ignores the complexity of human experience. Both become stubbornly blind to the flaws in their own arguments and entrenched in their opposition to each other. Currently, most of the most intractable conflicts in politics are based not on policy so much as on differing moralities which cannot see past differences to a common flaw: human pride and stubbornness.
On a lesser note, Creon's misogyny also seems relevant—he repeatedly makes claims about not granting Antigone's position any validity due to her gender. This is familiar enough in current societal conflicts, and one could extend misogyny to issues of race and other discriminatory practices. Denying that Antigone's voice matters, Creon is unable to reconcile the central conflict in his state.
The previous post was really strong. I would like to expand on the gender conflict identified. I think that Sophocles' drama brings to light the struggle of women to assert their own sense of self in the political realm. We can take this into a worldwide setting. We have become more aware of places in the world where it is a struggle for women to assert themselves politically, or assert their own sense of identity in a strictly stratified social order where women's roles are defined. The struggles for acknowledgment of this voice is something that finds women struggling throughout the world. There are many situations where women are forced to be silent on a political level, similar to what Creon and the social order sought to do to Antigone. At the same time, we see in these battles the struggle between the Antigones and the Ismenes, the collision between voices that seek to change conditions in the Status Quo and those that seek to replicate them.
Sophocles' Antigone focuses on the following choices:
1. Civil law vs. personal morality. Antigone chose to obey her own convictions by burying her brother, even though it was against the law of the land. Antigone saw breaking the law as not a sin.
2. Family obedience vs. betrayal. Antigone disobeys her uncle, her sister, and her boyfriend's influence on her decision-making. Antigone felt that family allegiance limited her freedom and choice.
3. Tradition: revenge and burial rites. Creon sought to take revenge (a very male tradition) on his nephew, even after death. Antigone, on the hand, followed the (female) tradition that everyone should be buried.
4. Gender differences. Creon acts very "male" in the play. Ismene acts very "female." Antigone is caught in the middle. She carries out her duty in burying her brother, but is exiled to death much like a male soldier.
So, pick a combination of themes that apply to you. Certainly, you've had to choose between following what you thought was right versus what your culture, family, tradition, or opposite gender thought was right.