THE WEAKNESS OF FAMILIAL PIETY: THE FALL OF ANTIGONE
The Antigone we see in her last scene in the play is a changed woman. Heretofore she has expressed utter indifference toward the city, has dismissed the citizens as cowardly, and has argued that the laws of the city lack authority over her (see, for example, 9—10, 78—81, 504—7, 450—60; see also 821).
Now, for the first time, she addresses the city and her fellow citizens and asks for their sympathy (806—16, 839—51, 937—43). Previously, she had acted in the name of the eternal laws of the gods. Now she acts in the name of a law that she herself has discovered or devised (compare 450— 60 with 904—15). Up to now, Antigone has insisted that her death would be a gain for her, since she would be with her family forever in an afterlife (71—6, 89, 93—7, 460—70, 553, 555; see also 1—6). Now, for the first time, she laments her death and specifically laments the fact that she will never know the joys of marriage and children (see 806—16, 876—82, 933—4, and especially 916—20; compare also 461—2 with 895—6).The explanation for this change lies in Antigone’s loss of confidence in her own justice and her consequent loss of confidence in winning for herself divine rewards after death. She compares herself to Niobe, a heroine who, along with her father Tantalus, was harshly punished by the gods (823—33; Homer Iliad 24.602—17; see Odyssey 11.582—92). She asks why she should look to the gods for help. And she regards it as an open question as to whether or not she is just and hence whether she will be rewarded or punished by the gods after death (921—8). Because Antigone now doubts that she is just, she also doubts that the gods are on her side, she is overwhelmed by her solitude, and she looks to her fellow human beings for sympathy, if not support.
Why has Antigone suddenly lost confidence in her justice? Evidently, Creon’s challenge to Antigone’s belief in the fundamental unity of the family leads her to wonder whether justice can truly consist of devotion to the family.
For now, she discusses her family in terms of the individuals who constitute it rather than as a collective unit. For the first time in the play, Antigone speaks in some detail of her father and her mother, as well as of her brothers, though not at all of her sister (compare 1—6, 74—5, 89, and 559—60 with 857—66 and 897—915). And by focusing on the individuals of her family, rather than on the abstract entity “family,” she inevitably focuses on the conflicts within her family and so alludes to her father’s patricide, the incest between her parents, and her mother’s suicide (857—66). Moreover, and perhaps most shockingly, she blames her brother Polyneices for her imminent death (870—1; see also 902—3). She seems to suggest that, by going to Argos, marrying an Argive princess, raising an army, and attacking Thebes, he sacrificed his sister for the sake of his quest for power. In this way, Antigone seems to embrace the view suggested by Creon that the family is not a true community but an arena of conflict, that devotion to the family as such is impossible and therefore cannot be just, and hence that her attempted devotion will not be rewarded by the gods.Antigone does make one final attempt to justify her burial of Polyneices and thereby to justify her hopes for divine rewards after death. Moreover, she begins her last speech by addressing her ancestral gods as well as the city of Thebes. Finally, in her last words in the play, she declares to the chorus: “Look on me, you who rule over Thebes, the only one left of the royal family, such things do I suffer from such men, for having revered piety” (940—3). It might seem then, that Antigone ultimately dies confident that she has acted justly and piously and so will be duly rewarded by the gods after death.
Yet when she is imprisoned by Creon in a tomb-like cave with some food, and left to pray to the gods for salvation and to see whether or not they will save her, Antigone quickly kills herself (773—80, 1220—5). It seems that she dies in despair, without hope that the gods will save her from death or that a noble, pious death will bring her happiness in the hereafter.
Her suicide suggests that, in the end, she cannot believe that she deserves the gods' assistance.In order to understand why her faith in her justice collapses so quickly, let us consider more carefully the last argument she makes to justify her burial of her brother.
“Tomb, bridal chamber, deeply dug dwelling, eternal watchman, where I am going to those who are my own, that great number of those who have perished, whom Persephone has received among the dead. I, the last of them and most evil by far, I go down, before the portion of my life has passed. Yet I go greatly cherishing the hope that I will arrive there loved by my father, loved as well by you, mother, and loved by you, my brother. Since, when you died, with my own hands I washed and adorned you and poured libations on your tombs. And now, Polyneices, for preparing your body, such is the reward that I win. Yet those who think well will think that I did well by honoring you. For, had I been by nature a mother of children, or if my husband were dead and wasting away, I never would have taken up this labor with violence against my fellow citizens. What law do I invoke when I say these things? If a husband had died, I might have had another, and a child from another man, if I were bereaved of the first. But once my mother and father were hidden in Hades, no brother would ever sprout forth.
Through such a law, then, I honored you above all, but seemed to Creon to err in these things and to dare terrible things, dear brother. And now, taking me by the hand, he is leading me this way, unwed, without a marriage hymn, without my share of marriage and the nurture of children, but thus forsaken by loved ones, ill-fated, I go down, into the deeply dug chamber of the dead, alive. What justice of divinities have I transgressed? Why should I, a wretched one, still look to the gods? Whom should I call to as an ally? Since, while I have been pious, I have acquired impiety. But if, then, these things [namely, Creon's condemnation and punishment of her] are noble in the eyes of the gods, we, having suffered, will recognize that we have erred.
But if these men [namely, Creon and the guards] are the ones who err, may they suffer no greater evil than I, even though they act without justice” (891—928).Antigone begins by arguing that she has reason to hope that she will be welcomed in the afterlife by her father, her mother, and her brother Eteocles, and presumably by the gods, because she has fulfilled her duty to all her family by honoring each of them with a burial. In this way, Antigone invokes the divine law she had referred to earlier, which commands humans to be devoted to the family and to honor their dead kin with burial (450—70). Yet this argument evidently does not prove that she has been devoted to her family, for the objection of Creon remains: by honoring her brother Polyneices, she is honoring her brother Eteocles' murderer and hence honoring one who dishonored her family most emphatically. How then can she be confident that Eteocles and her parents will welcome her? How can she be confident that they will not condemn her for disloyalty to the family as harshly as she has condemned her sister? In this case, at least, it seems impossible to fulfill the divine law, since it is impossible for her to honor one member of her family without dishonoring another. The divine law appears to be fundamentally defective. It assumes that the family is a natural whole or unity, to which one can be consistently devoted. But the case of Polyneices and Eteocles shows that the family is not a natural whole or unity. Therefore Antigone cannot justify her burial of her brother and her hopes of earning rewards after death by invoking the divine law that commands humans to be devoted to the family.
Yet, rather than abandoning all hope for divine rewards after death and hence all hope for immortality, Antigone tries to justify her burial of her brother and her hope for divine rewards by invoking a new “law,” one that she herself discovers, or devises, by her own lights. Like Creon, Antigone is led by the moral inadequacies of the divine law to seek on her own a new law, one that will reflect a new understanding of justice.
Antigone now reasons that she never would have battled with her fellow citizens, that she never would have risked her life, in order to bury a dead husband or a child. For she could have found another man to take the place of her dead husband and she could have conceived and given birth to another child to replace her dead child. But since the death of her parents, it is impossible for Antigone to have a new brother to take the place of the dead Polyneices. His loss is irretrievable. According to this law, then, she acted justly by sacrificing her hopes for marital and familial happiness in this life in order to bury her brother.The most striking feature of the law Antigone sets forth here is its relaxation of the demand to risk one's life for the sake of one's dead kin and the greater weight it places on the pursuit of one's own happiness in this life. Whereas the divine law evidently commands humans to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, to bury their family members, and warns them that if they do not they will be punished in the afterlife, this new law commands humans to sacrifice their lives only to bury those family members who have died and cannot be replaced (see 450—70; see also 45—6, 71—7). If your husband dies, Antigone's law says, do not risk your life to bury him, but replace him, presumably because it is possible for you to recover from his death and live happily. But if an irreplaceable member of your family dies, your loss is irremediable, and therefore it makes sense to risk all to honor that member.
Antigone seems to try, through this new law, to temper the duty to bury one's dead loved ones with devotion to one's own happiness in this life. As Antigone's doubts grow concerning the possibility of truly devoting herself to her family and thereby earning divine rewards after death, her concern for happiness in this life grows as well. As Antigone's doubts grow concerning the possibility of fulfilling her duty to her family, her concern for duty declines and her concern for her own well-being, in the here and now, is liberated.
Indeed, the law she sets forth here seems to subordinate the devotion to family to the concern for one's individual self and one's individual happiness. For the law declares: Do not sacrifice your life for the sake of your loved ones unless you have suffered a loss you cannot replace. In other words, the law seems to counsel: Do not risk your life unless you have lost all hope for happiness in this life and your life is no longer worth living. Thus understood, the “law” would seem to be a counsel of prudence rather than a true moral law. 39Yet Antigone persists in speaking the language of law and justice rather than that of prudence and self-interest. Moreover, the law she sets forth here does not consistently make concern for one's happiness its priority. Antigone claims that, according to this law, she does well by sacrificing her life for her brother, since she can never have another
39 I suggest that it is precisely Antigone’s questioning here of her previously unqualified belief in divine law, duty, and nobility that has led numerous commentators to insist that these lines must be spurious. Consider, for example, Goethe: “There is a passage in Antigone which I always look upon as a blemish, and I would give a great deal for an apt philologist to prove that it is interpolated and spurious. After the heroine has explained the noble motives for her action, and displayed the elevated purity of her soul, she at last, when she is led to death, brings forward a motive that is quite unworthy and almost borders on the comic.. This is, at least, the bare sense of this passage, which
in my opinion, when placed in the mouth of a heroine going to her death, disturbs the tragic tone and appears to me very far-fetched — to savour too much of dialectical calculation” (1984, 144). Jebb similarly asserts, “I confess that, after long thought, I cannot bring myself to believe that” Sophocles wrote these lines (1979, 182). But Jebb also admits that all of our manuscripts contain lines 904—20 and that Aristotle cites lines from this passage in Rhetoric 3.16.9. Winnington-Ingram, who admits to having changed his view “again and again,” maintains that the passage is spurious because of her “contorted argument,” and therefore concludes that Antigone at the end is “indignant rather than perplexed” (1980, 145—6). Reinhardt accepts the authenticity of the lines but denies that Antigone here questions the divine law. Indeed he goes so far as to assert that “the opposing sides in this drama, personified in Antigone and Creon, have no conflict within themselves” (1979, 65; see also 83—4, 251—2). Ormand contends that the “lines are consistent... with the values that Antigone expresses throughout the drama” (1999, 96; see also Foley 1996, 54—8). Tyrrell and Bennett, while accepting the lines, also deny that she doubts herself and even claim that, by committing suicide, she defiantly “seizes control of her body” (1998, 112—19, 143—4). Knox recognizes that she questions herself here but then insists that she remains selfconfident, and reasonably so: “She is rightly confident of the gratitude of those beloved dead she goes to join” (1964, 113; 103—7).
brother. Now the fact that she cannot ever have another brother would naturally make Polyneices' death more grievous to her. But why should she not still seek happiness in this life, through marriage with the worthy Haemon and companionship with her remaining — and similarly irreplaceable — sister, Ismene? Why should she sacrifice her pursuit of happiness in this life simply because she can never have another brother? Why does she not follow the line of thinking implicit in her revision of the divine law to its ultimate conclusion and make the pursuit of her own happiness in this life her central, explicit concern?
What prevents Antigone from taking this step is her persistent attachment to her hope for immortality. She clings to the hope that, by sacrificing herself for her family, she will be rewarded by the gods for her nobility and justice. Now Antigone is shaken here in her belief in her own justice and in her hopes for immortality. Accordingly, she steps away from the divine law, and feels more powerfully than before a desire for happiness in this life. But she still clings to the belief that, by burying the corpse of her brother Polyneices, she is exhibiting her devotion to an entity larger than her individual self or any individual self — the family — and is thereby rendering herself worthy of divine rewards after death. In this light, the family appears to be a means through which she may feel superior to mere self-interest and may thereby hope to achieve the self-interested goal of personal immortality.
Antigone here points, however, to another, different way by which one may possibly satisfy one's desire for personal immortality through the family: the procreation of children. For the first time in the play, she evinces a desire, albeit a wistful desire, for marriage and offspring (see 916—20 as well as 806—12, 876—82). As Antigone's hopes regarding divine rewards in an afterlife fade, her longing for marriage and children in this life grows. Now, the passion for immortality, so powerful in Antigone, would seem to find its most widespread and tangible expression in what Aristotle calls “the natural impulse to leave behind another that is like oneself” {Politics 1252a29-30). By leaving behind one that is like oneself, one may cherish the hope that a part of oneself— another self - will live on after one has passed away. When Antigone refers to herself in her last lines in the play as “the only one left of the royal family” (941), she may mean to lament specifically that her family has no future because she has borne no children and therefore will leave nothing of herself once she is dead.
It is true that the story of Antigone’s family in particular — the killing by Oedipus of his father, the exile of Oedipus by his sons — would seem to call into question the reasonableness of the belief that parents live on through their offspring after death. Nevertheless, through the scenes surrounding her death, Sophocles invites us to wonder whether Antigone’s longing for happiness and immortality would not have found a healthier and more fruitful outcome through married life with Haemon than through dying for her dead brother in the hope of enjoying immortal well-being in Hades.[96] In the scene that precedes Antigone’s final scene, we see that Haemon is so in love with Antigone that he publicly defies his father the king and thereby risks the loss of his father’s affection and his own princely status. At this point, we hear the choral ode on the awesome, frightening, but also beautiful power of Eros (781—99). We then see Antigone express her wish for marriage and children in her last scene. Finally, we see again that Haemon is so in love with Antigone that he comes to her rescue, in defiance of his father’s edict. Would the pious heroine not have found happiness with such a noble lover? Would she not have found satisfaction in marrying the prince of Thebes and ruling the city as part of a renewed “royal family” (941)?
Yet Haemon arrives to rescue his beloved only to find that Antigone has killed herself. Notwithstanding her lament at the end of her life that she will never know the joys of marriage and children, the focus of Antigone’s hopes and longings is never happiness with Haemon, whose name she never even mentions in the play, but divine rewards after death. Accordingly, when she loses all conviction that she deserves the reward of everlasting happiness, she despairs of all happiness and takes her own life.
The first irrevocable act in the play is the suicide of Antigone. Until that moment, there is still hope that all that has been done may be undone and hence that she will be spared by a repentant Creon, see her brother buried, marry Haemon, and live happily with her loving husband, eventually even becoming queen of Thebes. She kills herself on the verge of being rescued by Haemon and hence on the verge, it would seem, of leading the life of marriage and family that she herself wishes for by the end of the play. One might argue that Antigone loses such happiness primarily because she lacks sufficient faith in the gods. After all, don't they send Teiresias to Creon and prompt him to bury her brother and spare her? Yet the fact that it is Haemon who comes to save her first suggests that Antigone's principal error is her lack of faith in human providence rather than divine providence.
Antigone first risks her life for the corpse of her brother because she believes that she will thereby win the divine reward of immortal happiness, and then kills herself when she loses hope of deserving such a reward. She is led by her desire to be pious and ultimately by her desire for a superhuman happiness after death to separate herself from, and even blind herself to, the love of Haemon. She thereby deprives herself of the possibility of a human happiness. Her self-interested desire for immortal happiness leads her to lose all hope for happiness in the here and now. Her deepest failing is not her loss of faith in her own justice or in her own worthiness of divine rewards or in the gods, but her lack of faith in human love, in the love of others for her. It is the pious reverence for the gods and the pious longing for immortality of this pious heroine that cause her ruin.