Sophocles, 496-406 B.C.E, is an ancient dramatist and the best play-writer of 468 B.C.E who created his works for the readers of Athenian civilization. On the whole, he wrote around 120 plays seven of which reached the present-day reader.
The main idea of the play “Antigone” is pride and loyalty. This idea can be observed throughout the play. For example, Ismene asks Antigone: “For you to bury him, a thing forbidden by the state?” And she replies “Yes, him, why is at all events my brother; and yours, though you wish it not; for I will not be caught betraying him”. And when Antigone buried her brother Creon wondered if she wanted to confess in it because he was ready to murder her if the answer was positive. Antigone, in her turn, was ready to accept death because she was convinced that Creon aimed to kill her anyways. When she asked him whether he wished her death he replied: “I indeed wish nothing more. Having this I have all”. Eventually, Antigone’s disinclination to obey Creon made her kill herself: “On the principle of such a law, having preferred you, my brother, to all other considerations, I seemed to Creon to commit a sin, and to dare what was dreadful”.
Antigone is shown as a person who is true to her principles and who is ready to be put to death rather than to betray them. As far as Creon is concerned, he is shown as a determined person who places the rules and laws above all and who wants other people to respect him and to obey him. He keeps to the point that if a person respects the rules, he or she is devoted but this person does not have a right to contradict to somebody who has certain powers: “Thy self-willed temper has destroyed thee” he says to Antigone when she refuses to make it his way. In some parts of the play the writer resorts to rhetoric questions which support the idea of the play and show Antigone’s loyalty and prove how much determined she is to observe her principles: “For I knew I must die (and why not?)” she is saying to Creon showing that she is ready to face her destiny if that is what the loyalty to her brother is going to take. The tone of the plot is realistic though Antigone’s desire to fight for her rights seems to be more characteristic for the 21st century ideas rather than for those times when the events of the play take place.
“Antigone” was written in 441 B.C.E when Athens was very prosperous. The city emerged as a hegemon of Greek city-states and in this period of time was experiencing ideological transformation in the course of which the city known for radical democracy started depriving other city-states of their sovereignty which contradicted the principles the Athenian identity was relying on. This contradiction is revealed in the play by confronting the principles of two characters, Creon who felt his powers and used them to the fullest possible extent and Antigone with her actions which were not only undermining the polis but breaking her filial bonds which, according to her own principles of family loyalty, she was supposed to keep to above all.