Justice in Antigone: Tipping the Scale
Justice in Antigone is controversial; from the perspective of different characters, justice served through their fates often enough ends in tragedy. So why would Sophocles’ portrayal of justice contend? To fully understand this, we must go back to what transpired in the Greek classic.
Antigone
The play starts with Antigone and Ismene arguing over burying Polynices. Creon had issued a law that would prevent their brother from getting a proper burial, and anyone who does bury the body is stoned to death. Antigone, unwavering in her belief in the Divine law, chooses to bury her brother without Ismene’s help. She ventured off into the grounds to bury Polyneices and was caught by two palace guards doing so.
They drag her towards Creon, only to be entombed alive as punishment awaiting her execution. Haemon, Antigone’s fiancé and Creon’s son, argued for the release of Antigone and was vehemently refused by his father. In disappointment, Haemon marches off, planning to free his fiancé.
As Haemon stomps away, Tiresias, the blind prophet, arrives. He warns the current King of Thebes to be wary of angering the gods. The blind prophet insists on freeing Antigone for the rights of the dead are the gods’ concerns, and Antigone only follows through with their agenda.
He reiterates that Creon can only rule in this realm and that once in death, the gods take over, but the King, prideful as he was, heeds no mind to the prophet’s warnings, calling the old man a fake. Tiresias, an older man who no longer takes the abuse, is asked to be sent away as Creon is left to his mullings. The chorus is afraid of Tiresias’ foresight, and Creon admits that he, too, is worried about his fate.
At the exact moment, Haemon stomps his way to his lover, eagerly planning to set the girl free. He arrives in the cave only to see that Antigone had hung herself, leaving her corpse in the tomb. Distraught, Haemon joins his lover and takes his own life, close to Antigone. Creon, scared by foretold fate, immediately rushes to set his prisoner free, but to his dismay, he witnesses his son’s death.
Creon brings Haemon’s body back to the palace and mourns the loss of his son. Upon hearing her son’s death, Eurydice, Creon’s wife, kills herself, and thus Creon lives in misery from his fate.
Examples of Justice in Antigone
Justice, described to be the quality of being righteous, upholds the moral rightness of a cause. In so, lawfulness, as a claim or title, does not equate itself to being law-abiding but the moral principle determining conduct instead. Antigone, a character of moral upbringing, chooses to bury her brother despite the consequences she may face.
Antigone’s Justice
The Greeks strongly believe in burial; the divine gods proclaimed the need for burial to enter the underworld, and failure to do such will result in a lost soul. Antigone, resolute in this belief, believe she is on the side of good and must push through with her cause.
Unlike her sister, Ismene, who believes justice is the law, Antigone extracts hers through the “Divine law.” Antigone buries her brother and gets the justice she seeks, yet the King’s moral compass that opposes her own views this as disobedience.
Antigone’s sense of justice is deeply rooted in her love of the gods. Their laws are hers, and so mortal law holds no claim to her conscience. She dubs the King of Thebes as an arrogant sinner, a tyrant of nature, who sin against the gods, and therefore she holds no respect nor fear for the creed he’d proclaimed.
Antigone’s fears were deeply rooted in the soul of her dead brother, afraid he could not enter Hades’ kingdom, and so she buried him despite the opposition from Creon.
Creon’s Justice
Creon, a tyrant, refuses the burial of Polyneices, giving the command of preventing such, as so his sense of justice is his word. He believes strongly in his opinion as to the King and, in a sense, thinks it is right and just for all his people to follow as he says, for his words are law, as such those who oppose him should naturally be punished to death.
His version of justice is imprisoning Antigone for going against his decree. He firmly believes he is on the moral side, for he is following the law. In doing so, the “Mortal law” vs. “Divine law” is at play where Antigone is on the divine law while Creon is on the opposition. Justice is further illustrated in specific quotes within the Greek text.
Antigone Quotes About Justice
In the first scene in Antigone, she informs her sister of her deliberate defiance against the King Creon, stating, “He has no right to keep me from my own.” This quote directly reflects her intention of seeking the justice her brother was bitterly kept from.
Ismene replies, “The law is strong; we must give in to the law, in this thing and in worse. I bet the dead to forgive me, but I am helpless: I must yield to those in authority” She reflects on mortal law, citing her form of justice as following the law for the dead would forgive her anyway.
Another quote of justice is from Creon addressing his counselors “There is no art that teaches us to know/ The temper, mind or spirit of any man/ Until he has been proved by government/ And lawgiving.” He states that they do not know what to do with Polyneices and therefore cannot do anything against his law, for he now rules the city and is the prime legislator representing their government. His sense of justice is his word, for he is the law.
Up next is Eurydice’s form of justice as she is informed of her son’s deaths “So side by side they lie, and both are dead./ Not in this world but in the world below / He wins his bride and shows to all mankind / That folly is the worst of human evils.” The speaker states, referring to the death of both her son Haemon and Antigone’s bodies.
The end of the two inflects their love and how they’ve now joined hands in the underworld. They emphasize the immoral act of taking one’s life and how this is the worst type of evil. To the speaker’s and audience’s dismay, this brings Eurydice into a spiral to take her own life, inciting justice by leaving her husband to mourn over their deaths, alone in agony.
Lastly, Antigone’s quote on the unjust way men of power has been used as she states, “O look upon me,/ The last that remains of a line of kings!/ How savagely impious men use me,/ For keeping a law that is holy.” Explaining how Creon paints her as the victim of the law despite the injustice it holds. She asserts her rightfulness as she dubs Creon a sinful man for using power and the law for his selfish purpose.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve talked about justice, what it is, how the characters portray each as such, and the fates they held, let’s go over the critical points of this article:
- Justice is described to be the quality of being righteous, to uphold the moral rightness of a cause in Sophocles’ Antigone, justice seems to be the grapple between mortal law and divine law.
- Creon’s sense of justice stems from his hubris and ego, believing himself to be the prime legislator whose word is the law, and therefore, any in opposition shall be punished or sentenced to death.
- On the other hand, Antigone believes her justice to be on par with her morals; her deep belief in the gods allows her to push through to seek her version of justice despite the consequences of such.
- Antigone ends up fulfilling her cause by burying her brother and ensuring he enters the underworld. Instead of allowing someone as sinful as Creon to extract his version of moral uprightness upon her death, she chooses to take her own life instead.
- Eurydice’s form of justice is in her death as she leaves her husband, the cause of Haemon’s death, to forever grieve in loneliness.
- Various characters exhibit and quote their versions of justice and follow each decree to the core; from Ismene yielding to mortal law to Eurydice taking her own life, each character enacts their understandings of justice.
In conclusion, the controversy of Sophocles’ portrayal of justice in Antigone is rooted in the never-ending argument of mortal and divine laws. In modern times this could be directly translated as the Church and state; despite legislation separating the two opposing statutes, the general population still struggles with separating the two.
Conservatives demand we follow morality based on their religion to the liberals wanting to be inclusive of all beliefs; the disagreement between the believers of both parties requires their version of justice to be morally upright. Antigone, on the side of religion, while Creon, on the side of mortal law, the two clash from the distinct sense of morality.
