Antigone

 Antigone 

Sophocles'  best known tragedies, Antigone and Oedipus, the King , are less lyrical than Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers in that  their internal dilemmas and external conflicts are held in more equal balance.  In the Sophoclean tragedies, the plot holds greater autonomy from the workings of the tragic individual's mind.  In Antigone, Creon's entrapment is still based on his mode of thinking, but now the double bind is built more on actions than on images, more on events than on diction.   Whereas The Libations Bearers consists of the presentation of various thoughts and states of mind culminating in a single action, Antigone provides a stream of interactions and actions.  As Electra, the Chorus and Orestes are essentially in agreement with one another, the conflicts are basically internal as long as they occupy the stage.  Creon, by contrast, engages in public conflict with the Guard, Antigone, Haemon and Teiresias each in turn.   

The basic structure of the play is lyrical, that is, framed within the persona of one individual, but with this assertion we must recognize Creon as that individual.  However,  that it is Antigone who is generally considered the heroine of the drama and Creon, for his part, is noted for his  unheroic and prosaic qualities is problematic. 31   Moses Hadas, in his introduction to Antigone in Greek Drama , offers this assessment of the play's characterization:   

Creon does bluster, to cover his weakness, but his afflictions are almost greater than Antigone's.  He shows his devotion to duty, after Teiresias' admonition, by first  giving Polyneices proper burial and then going to free Antigone.  But the tragedy is properly named for Antigone rather than Creon.  Only a self-impelled hero can extend the horizons of what is possible for man; for the rest of us, who must follow the discreteness of the chorus and lesser characters, the spectacle of a young girl giving up life and love for the sake of an ideal must remain permanently edifying. 32 

Hadas' conclusions clearly emerge from a vision of tragedy being based on "character" in the honorific sense of the word.  However, if we recognize tragedy as the defeat of a particular sense of reality, we should also recognize that it is Creon who suffers in the play, it is Creon's dilemma which supports the structure of the play, and it  is Creon's reality which is finally defeated.   

David Grene, in his introduction to Sophocles 1 in The Complete Greek Tragedies series,  addresses this issue of who should best be seen to occupy center stage in our understanding of the play. 

Usually, as we know, the Antigone is interpreted entirely as a conflict between Creon and Antigone.  It has often been regarded as the classical statement of the struggle between the law of the individual conscience and the central power of the state.  Unquestionably, these issues are inherent in the play.   Unquestionably, even Sophocles would understand the modern way of seeing his play, for the issue of the opposition of the individual and the state was sufficiently present to his mind to make this significant for him.  But can the parallelism between the position of Oedipus in the one play and Creon in the other be quite irrelevant to the interpretation of the two?  And is it not very striking that such a large share of the Antigone should be devoted to the conclusion of the conflict, as far as Creon is concerned, and to the destruction of his human happiness? 33 

Grene sees the play as a reiteration of a theme which we can see as an example of double-bind style miscommunication. 

What I would suggest is this:  that Sophocles had at the time of writing the first play (in 442 BC) a theme in mind which centered in the Theban trilogy.  One might express this by saying that it is the story of a ruler who makes a mistaken decision, though in good faith, and who then finds himself opposed in a fashion which he misunderstands and which induces him to persist in his mistake. 34

 

However, in The Madness of Antigone , Else contends that the play is best understood as a sequel to Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes , in which case the issue of the play is the curse on the house of Labdacus, and the destiny of his great granddaughter, Antigone, is, therefore, the central  issue of Antigone .  Else is adamant that in their conflict Antigone is clearly  right and Creon is wrong and, furthermore, "When all is said and done, Antigone remains a heroine, a mighty person, while Kreon is a little man struggling hard, but in vain, to be a mighty one." 3235  However, we should keep in mind, as Else himself points out, that his analysis of the play is based  on the premise (which seems to me questionable) that it is a sequel to Seven Against Thebes . 

To most modern readers Antigone appears a more interesting and compelling character than Creon.  The assumption in many analyses of tragedy is that the central protagonist is a striking character, like Antigone, and consequently, in deciding who the central protagonist of a tragedy is we should look to who most commands our attention and interest.  However,   Antigone is held together by our focus on the individual who eventually suffers the negation of his sense of reality over the course of the drama; that is, Creon.  Although Else describes Antigone as being mad at certain points in the play, he finds that the tenor of Antigone's final rhesis is of "courage and the wholeness of spirit restored." 36  As Else describes her:  "In short, Antigone appears to me now, on the verge of death, un-maddened, released from the pressure of her ‘fury’ and ready to accept reality whatever it may be, in this life or the next." 37    As for Creon, Else adds the parenthesis:  "(It goes without saying that no such release from his delusion is ever vouchsafed to Kreon.   The appearance of one opens up to him at 1099ff. but it is external and deceptive, leading to his moral annihilation.)"  From Else's conclusions I would argue that Antigone's destiny is a completed episode within the play and we are therefore distanced from that destiny by the extended denouement of the drama.   However,  Creon's dilemma occupies the drama from beginning to end.  His visions and perceptions, his misgivings and self-contradiction dominate the world of the play and it is his destiny which occupies the final moment of the play and which leads us to a penetration, a questioning of, the worldview (Creon's worldview) which while framing the action also cracks before our eyes. 

    Thus it is Creon who suffers the fragmentation of his reality, and it is this process which the play traces.  Once we have begun to focus on Creon as a tragic hero, we find that his failings are both mitigated and dramatized by Antigone's antagonism.   Moreover, we find that the play unfolds a process whereby Antigone's madness provokes the negation of Creon's reality and he becomes "infected"  with her madness. 

Antigone is heroic in her refusal to be "yoked" by Creon, but her refusal frequently borders on vanity and is tainted by her obsessive fascination with death.  When Ismene, her sister, tells her that her insistence on countermanding Creon's edict by burying her brother is "wild and futile action" which "makes no sense;" (68) 38  Antigone's reaction is haughty and her logic reflects her fixation on death. 

I wouldn't urge it.  And if now you wished 

to act, you wouldn't please me as a partner. 

Be what you want to; but that man shall I 

bury.  For me, the doer, death is best. 

Friend shall I lie with him, yes friend with friend, 

when I have dared the crime of piety. 

Longer the time in which to please the dead 

than that for those up here. (69-76) 

It is Antigone's intention not only to perform the forbidden burial rights but to be caught at it, and to suffer the punishment of death.  When Ismene suggests that Antigone's transgression will remain their secret, Antigone answers:  "Dear God! Denounce me.  I shall hate you more/ if silent, not proclaiming this to all." (86-7)  Antigone cannot be dissuaded, and reiterates the desirability of dying for her piety.  “But let me and my own ill-counselling / suffer this terror.  I shall suffer nothing / as great as dying with a lack of grace” (95-7). 

Before Creon, Antigone returns to this theme of the desirability of death. 

I knew I must die; how could I not? 

even without your warning.  If I die 

before my time, I say it is a gain. 

Who lives in sorrows many as mine 

how shall he not be glad to gain his death?   

And so, for me to meet this fate, no grief.  (460-5) 

From the mythological evidence one can easily infer ample provocation for Antigone's suicidal state.  She is the product of the incest of Oedipus and Jocasta, and her mother committed suicide. She herself wandered with the ostracized and monstrous Oedipus until his death.  She returns to her home to find her brothers at war with one another and they finally kill each other.  In the aftermath of the war, one of her deceased brothers, Polyneices, is subjected to sacrilegious humiliation and eternal unrest by her father-in-law to be, the king, Creon.  On the other hand, Antigone's fascination with death is perhaps best explained in her penultimate speech before her execution by entombment in a cave.   

O tomb, O marriage-chamber, hollowed out 

house that will watch forever, where I go. 

To  my own people, who are mostly there; 

Perserphone has taken them to her. 

Last of them all, ill-fated past the rest, 

shall I descend, before my course is run. 

Still when I get there I may hope to find 

I come as a dear friend to my  dear father, 

to you, my mother, and my brother too. 

All three of you have known my hand in death. 

I washed your bodies, dressed them for the grave, 

poured out the last libation at  the tomb. (891-902) 

Thus Antigone's madness is essentially this desire.  As Else describes it:  "She points insistently toward death.  But it is no Freudian death-wish that animates her, or any metaphysical Weltschmerz ; it is a simple, unquestioning drive to join those she loves, most of whom are dead--once Ismene deserts her, all dead." 39  This desire is more purely obsessive (as her sensuous remembrance of "bodies" "washed" and "dressed" "for the grave" would indicate)  and more purely mad than Else is prepared to recognize.   In fact, Else finally concludes that "seen from the inside,  the true name of Antigone's stubborn fixation is not madness but--love." 40 

Nonetheless she is rightly called mad in that she abandons "her loyalties and love for the living in favor of those below," and, as Segal notes, "upsets the balance between upper and lower worlds." 41  She is marked by madness in that she is associated more with the gods than with men, and she bears the curse of her lineage and the temperament of her family.  Her behaviour is mad in that it is untempered, sudden, rebellious and self-destructive. 

However, overall the play is not dedicated to the process of Antigone's madness, rather it is concerned with the double bind of which Antigone is the prime mover and Creon is nexus and victim.  From this perspective the following description which Bateson offers of the schizophrenic as a transmitter of double-bind situations  seems particularly applicable to Antigone: 

The psychoses seem, in part, a way of dealing with the double bind situations to overcome their inhibiting and controlling effect.  The psychotic patient may make astute, pithy, often metaphorical remarks that reveal insight into the forces binding him.  Contrariwise, he may become rather expert in setting double bind situations himself. 42 

As Segal observes, "By challenging one principle of civilization in the name of another, she generates a tragic division that calls the nature of social order itself into question." 43   Antigone, however, does not conspire against Creon in any conscious or malevolent sense; she simply represents the antithesis of Creon's vision of reality, and is, accidentally, in a position to do extreme damage to that vision.  In the first place, for Creon, like Orestes, manliness is paramount in his self-image.  Creon's response to Antigone's proclamation of having buried her brother is:  "I am no man and she the man instead/ if she can have this conquest without pain."  Creon's explanation to his son, Haemon, of his condemnation of Antigone concludes along the same line. 

If men live decently it is because 

discipline saves their very lives for them. 

So I must guard the men who yield to order, 

not let myself be beaten by a woman. 

Better, if it must happen, that a man 

should overset me. 

I won't be called weaker than a woman. (675-80) 

As Haemon attempts to oppose Creon, the first insult Creon pays him in their argument is:  "Your mind is poisoned.  Weaker than a woman!" (746).  The first dichotomy of Creon's entrapment is the priority of manliness in his sense of values and the fact that Antigone, his antagonist, is a woman.     

The “high mimetic” argument is often made that tragedy must deal with kings and princes because it is an elevated form designed for the portrayal of the superior elements of a society.  Creon, in passing, offers the following comment which happens to justify the portrayal of kings in tragedy from a new perspective:   “You cannot learn of any man  the soul, / the mind, and the intent until he shows / his practise of the government and law” (175-8). 

Creon immediately makes his "mind," "soul," and "intent" clear. 

For I believe that who controls the state 

and does not hold to the best plans of all, 

but locks his tongue up through some kind of fear, 

that he is worst of all who are or were. 

And he who counts another greater friend 

than his fatherland, I put him nowhere. (176-83) 

Thus Creon sets forward his basic principles, and these principles, as they are undermined by Antigone, are destined to set him in contradiction  with his loved ones and all that he holds dear.  His destiny is not only to abandon his principles but to be divested of his sense of manliness and to lose his loved ones as well. 

Just as Electra's dilemma of offering libations served as an analogue for Orestes' larger preoccupations, in Antigone the uncomfortable situation of the Guard who must report that someone had buried Polyneices is both parable and foreboding addressed to Creon's eventual self-contradiction.  The Guard begins by expressing his sense of dilemma at having to deliver bad tidings.  ". . . I had many haltings in my thought/ making me double back upon my road" (225-6).  After pleading his own innocence the Guard confesses that the body had been buried.  Creon immediately castigates the Guard, noting that the introduction of silver currency was leading to the decline of the state and  of individual integrity.  The Guard leaves vowing never to return.   However, he returns shortly thereafter with Antigone as his prisoner. (Antigone, doubtlessly intent on getting caught, had returned to the scene of her crime.)  The Guard's sententious comment on his own contradictory behaviour is, unbeknownst to him but clear enough for the audience, a warning to Creon:  "Lord, one should never swear off anything./  Afterthought makes the first resolve a liar" (387-88). 

In his parting comments the Guard becomes a foil for Creon; in fact, for the tragic hero in general. 

One's own escape from trouble makes one glad; 

but bringing friends to trouble is hard grief. 

Still, I care less for all these second thoughts 

than for the fact that I myself am safe. (437-40) 

The Guard becomes a cynical, almost comic, paradigm for the sane Everyman.  This ability to gloss over dilemmas with the contentment of self-preservation seems the one attitude which tragic heros are never able to muster. 

The speech of the Chorus, which covers the interlude between the Guard's departure and his return, sets up the theme of man reaching the limits of his universe--which, as already noted, is a basic theme of tragedy.  The  Chorus begins with the line, "Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger than a man."  The speech is ostensibly an encomium of man's accomplishments. However, the basic import of this "Ode to Man," as Segal points out, is ironic. 

The ode extols man's invention of sailing, agriculture, domestication of animals, shelter, medicine, and law.  It seems therefore to support the position of Creon, who begins as the embodiment of the secular rationalism of the Sophistic Enlightenment.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The subsequent action negates or qualifies nearly all the achievements the ode celebrates. 44

The ode's reference to the horse "yoked about the  neck" resonates throughout the play, for the drama arises from Antigone's refusal to be yoked and Creon's insistence that being rightly yoked is the essence of all order.  The Chorus goes on to mention language and the importance of expressing thoughts and feelings along with building shelter which prepares their comments on the greatest of evils, dishonour leading to exile; the greatest punishment is identified as being unable to share one's thoughts.  These comments forebode the tragedy which we are ready to anticipate and draw attention to Creon's failure to communicate with those around him. The Chorus lauds man's ability to solve whatever problem he encounters. 

. . . .   He can always help himself. 

He faces no future helpless.  There's only death 

that he cannot find an escape from.  He has contrived 

refuge from illnesses once beyond all cure. (358-62) 

However, through the tragedy we discover that the disease of folly is not to be avoided.  The reality man has created  of language, the state and the yoke proves to be limited, self contradictory, and self defeating.      

Not only is Creon's sense of manliness contradicted by Antigone, but his sense of authority and the primacy of the state is challenged by her rebelliousness.  Still more damaging to Creon's sense of reality is the terrible strength of the logic which Antigone brings to bear against him.  Antigone's injunction against Creon is clearly of a higher order, that of the gods, than the political and mundane concerns which have motivated Creon.   

Creon (to Antigone) 

You--tell me not at length but in a word. 

You knew the order not to do this thing? 

Antigone 

I knew, of course I knew.  The word was plain. 

Creon 

And still you dared to overstep these laws? 

Antigone 

For me it was not Zeus who made that order. 

Nor did that Justice who lives with the gods below 

mark out such laws to hold among mankind. 

Nor did I think your orders were so strong 

that you, a mortal man, could over-run 

the gods' unwritten and unfailing laws. (446-55) 

Not only does Antigone contradict Creon but her comments mark him as one who has overshot his moira and must suffer ate .  Creon's response is, perforce, non sequitous.  He counters with accusations of insolence and draws Ismene into the fray as Antigone's accomplice.  His pseudo-rational basis for demanding victory in this situation is that he is a man.  At this point Creon's double bind is set.  For Creon manliness and the heritage of masculine values and relationships is the hinge-pin of order in the state. If he is to assert his manliness, his authority and power, he must defeat Antigone, but if he defeats Antigone by putting her to death that action will jeopardize his sense of being a man, in particular his paternity, and his authority in the state.  Furthermore his accusation against Antigone is disobedience, but in denying the burial of Polyneices and persisting in the punishment of Antigone, he himself is being disobedient to divine law.  Antigone is quite adept at pointing out the contradiction of Creon's actions.  For example, she says of her conviction:  "I stand convicted of impiety, /  the evidence my pious duty done"  (923-4). 

Ismene's situation in the play shows as a clear example of Antigone's capacity to create double bind situations for those around her.  Ismene begins by calling Antigone's plans "wild and futile," but when Antigone threatens her with her hatred and the fury of the dead, Ismene's response is to express her love for her sister. 45  Antigone has already rejected the possibility of accepting Ismene's aid in the burial.  Given that Ismene wishes to remain a loved and loving sister to Antigone, her double bind becomes:  if she becomes Antigone's accomplice then Antigone will reject her, and if she does accompany Antigone in her actions and attitudes Antigone will still reject her, yet she cannot give up the love of her last living relative. 46  The situation leads to new levels of contradiction and confusion when the sisters are before Creon being accused of the unlawful burial.  Ismene, though completely innocent, pleads guilty to the crime.  Antigone rejects her confession.  Though Ismene is willing to accompany Antigone in death, Antigone's reaction to her is not only harsh but contradicts the fact of what Ismene has shown herself willing to do. 

Ismene 

You are in trouble, and I'm not ashamed 

to sail beside you into suffering. 

Antigone 

Death and the dead, they know whose act it was. 

I cannot love a friend whose love is words. 

Though Ismene's actions are at the point of the absurd, we can understand them and must sympathize with her.  Though Antigone finally adopts an air of reconciliation she has nonetheless left Ismene in an intolerable, paradoxical situation.  Creon's seemingly wry comment on their behaviour holds a grain of truth:  "One of these girls has shown a lack of sense/ just now.  The other had it from birth" (561-2). 

Creon himself, however, does not escape Antigone's madness.  His entire condemnation of Antigone is coloured by his introductory remarks which we must judge as an extremely ironic piece of projection and which must have been judged as ironic by Greek audiences.  “These rigid spirits are the first to fall. / The strongest iron, hardened in the fire, / most often ends in scraps and shatterings”  (473-76). 

Not only does Creon unwittingly describe himself and forebode his own destiny but Haemon later brings him face to face with his projection forcing Creon evermore into self-contradiction.   We should note that, on a more general level, Creon's descriptions of "rigid spirits" and "the strongest iron" apply to a great many tragic heroes for this rigidity is one of the features which makes the individual susceptible to double bind entrapment.  When Haemon wishes to counter his father's determination to execute Antigone, his metaphors seem cut from the same conceit as Creon's description of Antigone.   

A man, though wise, should never be ashamed 

of learning more, and must unbend his mind. 

Have you not seen the trees beside the torrent, 

the ones that bend them saving every leaf, 

while the resistant perish root and branch? 

And so the ship that will not slacken sail, 

the sheet drawn tight, unyielding, overturns. 

She ends the voyage with her keel on top. (710-17) 

Creon must recognize the logic of Haemon's arguments because they parallel his own and, furthermore, the Chorus applauds them.  It would seem that precisely because the arguments are so convincing, and would therefore contradict Creon's convictions about his own authority and role, the primacy of the state, the nature and importance of order, and the superiority of his own masculinity, he does not, in fact, cannot accept these arguments.  Creon's responses become less reasoned, more emotional and, rather than arguing to the point, he draws upon his position as a man,  an elder, a father, a ruler, a single mind which by custom is the mind which should be obeyed. It becomes clear that Creon is, more than anything else,  struggling to establish and maintain who he is against opposition from the very people whom he requires for that identity--his son, Antigone (as a woman, a daughter-in-law, a royal personage) and the Chorus (representing his subjects--and which has begun to play the role of conciliator rather than Creon's supporter). 

As Creon must doubtlessly be feeling the ground of his sense of reality growing shaky.  His actions become simply reactions, his words are  borne by waves of emotion.   

Haemon 

If you weren't father, I should call you mad. 

Creon 

Don't flatter me with "father," you woman's slave. 

Haemon 

You wish to speak but never wish to hear. 

Creon 

You think so?  By Olympus, you shall not 

revile me with these tauntings and go free. 

Bring out the hateful creature; she shall die 

full in his sight, close at her bridegroom's side. 

Haemon 

Not at my side her death, and you will not 

ever lay eyes upon my face again. 

Find other friends to rave with after this. (754-63) 

Although Creon makes little of Haemon's departure we should not underestimate the esteem in which Creon holds the role and title of father.  The relationship of father and son is clearly central to Creon's notions of an ordered and fruitful Universe.  Creon begins his discussions with Haemon saying: 

There's my good boy.  So should you hold at heart 

and stand behind your father all the way. 

It is for this men pray they may beget 

households of dutiful obedient sons, 

who share alike in punishing enemies, 

and who give due honour to their father's friends. (639-44) 

Though Creon does not himself attest to his love of his son, he would be recognized from myth as the father who refused to sacrifice his son, Menoeceus, even to save the city of Thebes when it was under attack from Polyneices. 47  In the structure of the play, Creon's estrangement from Haemon is a major movement in the shifting of his fortunes. 

The Choral lyric which follows Haemon's departure is on the theme of love causing madness.  Its intent is ambiguous.  Love is accused of making "this quarrel of kindred before us now" (793), but it seems to be Haemon's love of Antigone rather than the love of father and son to which they are referring.  The Chorus therefore seems to be siding with Creon, implying that Haemon is behaving madly as Creon has repeatedly claimed.  Yet the play conspicuously illustrates the folly of Creon's behaviour, and Haemon, to this point, has been comparatively rational.  On the one hand, these verses might simply be taken as a foreboding of Haemon's eventual suicide.  On the other hand, this sequence of action and Choral reaction demonstrates the contradictory nature of the double bind being built into the structure of the tragedy.  As we have seen in The Libation Bearers , right action, in a tragedy, can never seem to guarantee right reaction.  Like the characters themselves we are constantly faced with an ambiguous mix of good and evil, with fatal irony, with effects which seem to contradict their causes. The thematic pattern is consistent:  Antigone's piety is disobedience, Haemon's love is madness,  eventually Creon's steely single-mindedness will turn to weakness, submission and confusion, and, at a minor level, when Creon takes the self-damaging step of alienating his son, the Chorus illconceivedly supports him by referring to "the bloom of a girl's unwithered face"  (782) instilling madness, which discredits Haemon's valid arguments against his father. 

The subsequent scene is dedicated to raising sympathy for Antigone.  When Creon re-enters he is clearly cast in the role of villain, showing no hint of pity for Antigone who at this point has certainly gained the sympathy of the Chorus and of the audience.  Whereas the Chorus had previously dwelt upon the madness of Eros, their theme now becomes the madness of Dionysus.  The story they recall is of a king who was driven mad for resisting the rites of Dionysus, and it is clearly Creon who is being likened to this arrogant, Thracean tyrant.   

Teiresias arrives to warn Creon of his divinations--birds screeching "goaded by madness, inarticulate," offerings that would not burn, omens of sickness in the state.  Teiresias's points to the cosmic madness of Creon's actions.   

For you've confused the upper and lower worlds. 

You sent a life to settle in a tomb; 

you keep up here that which belongs below 

the corpse unburied, robbed of its release. 

No you, nor any god that rules on high 

can claim him now. 

You rob the nether gods of what is theirs. 

So the pursuing horrors lie in wait 

to  track you down.  The Furies sent by Hades 

and by all gods will even you with your victims. (1068-76) 

Teiresias diagnoses Creon as suffering the disease of "folly."  Creon has, like Antigone in her love of the dead and neglect of the living, turned the world upside down.  His destiny as prophesied by Teiresias is the madness inflicted by the Furies, moreover Teiresias implies Creon's madness will be, like Antigone's, an overwhelming desire for death.  Antigone's ambiguous curse (the last line of her penultimate speech) is to be clarified and realized. ("I wish them no greater punishment than mine"(928). ) 

Teiresias's invective can serve as a metaphor for the whole world of the play and the inevitable destiny of such a world.  As Else describes the situation:   

. . . to live, in the paradoxical logic of this play, means to die, to be nothing, to be  a living cipher.  That is the death that Ismene lives: not to exist, so far as the play is concerned, after line 771.  Kreon's death-in-life takes longer to achieve, because more is involved in it (the real deaths of his son and his wife), but it too comes by the end of the play." 48

Creon argues with Teiresias and insults him, but ultimately he is convinced by Teiresias's  divinations.   We must read Creon's change of heart as the cumulative effect of all the opposition he has faced, what he has lost through his stance and what more he might lose.  All the elements of Creon's argument, those exteriorizations of his sense of reality, have been weakened: by the example of the Guard, by the injunctions of Antigone, by the pleading of Ismene, by the wavering of the Chorus, and  by the opposition and estrangement of his son.  At first Creon disregards the seer as he had rejected all other suitors to the cause by attacking the arguer rather than the argument.  He accuses Teiresias of self-aggrandizement. 

Old man, you all, like bowmen at a mark, 

have bent your bows at me.  I've had my share 

of seers.  I've been an item in your accounts. 

Make profit, trade in Lydian silver-gold, 

pure gold of India; that's your chief desire.  (1034-8) 

By this point the tenor of Creon's accusations has begun to sound familiar.  The pattern of his refusing to accept advice and attacking the source of all opinions which might in the least oppose his ideas is now apparent:  Antigone was a woman and ultimately mad, Haemon was young and "slave of a woman," Ismene was "made mad," even the Guard was presumed dishonest, and finally Teiresias  is accused of money grubbing.  In the process of these repudiations it is Creon's credibility and conviction which are weakened. 

When Teiresias has left the stage, Creon suddenly admits the authenticity of the Old Man's prophecies, despite having just attempted to discredit him.  Creon's mind is torn, and the once stubborn, authoritarian, unbending tyrant, now begins to beg advice and promise his obedience to the Chorus.  Still Creon feels the pressure of his dilemma:  "How hard, abandonment of my desire./ But I can fight necessity no more" (1104-5). 

As this sentence implies, Creon's battle has been a long one.  Even in the face of Teiresias's threat of the vengeance of the Furies, it remains difficult to give up so much of what seems to Creon real and right.  His belief in the rights of masculinity and the meaning of masculinity as the source of order and justice,  his paternal relationship with his son, his role as leader, and his notion of the primacy of the state--all of these elements are intertwined in Creon's sense of reality and all at risk in his present submission. 

At this point in the play Creon's sense of reality could still be recovered, if somewhat transformed.  Antigone, through compromise, might show just enough submission to assuage the necessities of Creon's sense of manliness;  Haemon might easily, through his respect, return Creon's sense of paternity, order, obedience, authority and the justice of the state. This, of course, will not happen.  All that Creon requires to restore his sense of who he is and how the world is, will be lost to him forever.  Just as Creon finds Polyneices' body torn apart by wild animals, Creon himself will be torn apart psychologically.  Antigone has hanged herself.  Haemon turns on Creon, trying to kill him.  Haemon kills himself.  Even Creon's wife, Eurydice,  who might have provided solace, kills herself.  Creon is without a basis upon which to recover himself, without the hope of a rationalization, or a myth, or a conviction.  What he had believed in, he has already abandoned.  The state, authority, paternity, and being a man have been doubly negated; they have been made impossible and meaningless.  As the messenger describes the situation: 

Now everything is gone. 

Yes, when a man has lost all happiness, 

he's not alive.  Call him a breathing corpse. 

Be very rich at home.  Live as a king. 

But once your joy has gone, though these are left 

they are smoke's shadow to lost happiness. (1165-70) 

Creon announces his own madness, in fact attempts, it would seem, to shield himself behind an excuse of divine madness: 

It was a god who struck, 

who has weighted my head with disaster; he drove 

me to wild strange ways, 

his heavy heel on my joy.  (1272-76) 

The facade of daemonic intervention does not abide in this tragedy.  Upon learning of the death of Eurydice, Creon's madness becomes something real, chilly and immediate:  "I am mad with fear.  Will no one strike/  and kill me with cutting sword?" (1308-9)   Ultimately Creon is afflicted with Antigone's particular madness.  He begs and prays for death--it is ‘all his desire.’  His fate, as predicted by Teiresias, is the isolation of his empty house, haunted by the Furies.  He, as he says himself, is "nothing more than nothing now"  (1321).  Tyrannical rationalism and the dogma of masculinity have breached their limits. 

Notes

31.  Segal ( Tragedy and Civilization ) notes the absence of lyricism in Creon's language, p. 166, as well as in his general attitude and demeanour. 

32.  Moses Hadas, Greek Drama  (New York:  Bantam, 1965), pp. 80-1. 

33.  D. Grene and R. Lattimore, Sophocles 1  (New York:  Washington Square Press, 1967),    p.3. 

34.  Grene, p. 4. 

35.   The Madness of Antigone , p. 49. 

36.  Ibid, p. 65. 

37.  Ibid, p. 66. 

38.  All quotations of Antigone are from Sophocles 1 in The Complete Greek Tragedies , ed. and trans. D. Grene and R. Lattimore (New York:  Washington Square Press, 1967). 

39.   The Madness of Antigone , p. 33. 

40.  Ibid, p. 100. 

41.  Segal,   Tragedy and Civilization , p. 177. 

42.  Bateson, p. 261. 

43.  Segal,   Tragedy and Civilization , p. 152. 

44.  Ibid, p. 152. 

45.  Wyckoff  translates Ismene's parting line to Antigone as "you go/ senseless indeed, but loved by those who love you."  However, Else argues that the sense of "to your dear ones rightly dear" is an inaccurate translation and that, in fact, the line should read:  "Foolish you go, but to your dear ones rightly loving ." The Madness of Antigone , p. 35.  The implication is that Antigone is recognized as a  prophetess and martyr of love.  Whether Ismene describes Antigone as "loved" or as "loving," the implication for the present argument remains the same, Ismene avows and does not disavow her sister--which eventually places Ismene in a double-bind type situation. 

46.  Else argues for the justice and logic of Antigone's rejection of Ismene.  He writes:  "Later, 536ff., under great emotional stress, Ismene gives in and offers to join Antigone in death.  But it won't do.  She now wishes to accept the conclusion without having accepted the logic that led to the conclusion--i.e., she now wishes to be right for the wrong reason--and Antigone rejects her offer as adamantly as she had rejected her original advice.  "Justice" will not permit it:  538."   The Madness of Antigone , p.35.  However, the presentation of Antigone's reactions as unbendingly logical is inappropriate.  Not only does Antigone refuse to let Ismene off the hook, but consider the harshness of her invective against  Ismene in 541:  "Death and the dead, they know whose act it was./ I cannot love a friend whose love is words."  In 544, Antigone reverses her emotional thrust completely and is suddenly consoling.   It is not the case that Antigone is simple being logical and just, and everyone around her is in error.  Antigone is in emotional turmoil and she transmits that turmoil to those around her--Ismene, Haemon and Creon. 

47.  Segal ( Tragedy and Civilization ) elaborates on the myth, p. 175. 

48.   The Madness of Antigone , p. 35.