Motivation of Antigone’s Deed in Sophocles’ Tragedy

Presenting Antigone’s motivation while performing her act in religious aspect, as it is advocated in most modern studies, and considering thus her attitude as acting in defense of divine rights and willing to have Polynices’ should achieve the ᾽eternal rest᾿ seems inconsistent with the text of the play and the times when Sophocles wrote. Although his character shows herself pious and faithful to divine and customary rights, religious virtues are important to her not as a drive making her perform the deed or her goal, but merely as justification of her behavior. While thinking over the causes of Antigone’s deed, we should ask why she had determined to bury her brother in a given dramatic situation, and not just simply why se buried him. Normally speaking, had Creon’s interdiction not existed, her deed would have been driven by the very wish to fulfill the duty resulting from divine and customary rights. Meanwhile in Sophocles’ play Antigone’s behavior is the response to Creon’s ban on burying her brother. Hence asking for motives that had made her perform this act, we wonder why she buries her brother despite the ban in force. Therefore her attitude is a response to the king’s ban and ought to have been analyzed as such. Since the king aimed at bringing dishonor upon Polynices’ body (not at violating divine rights), Antigone was firmly wishing to save his brother from this disgrace. Hence the object of her dispute with Creon is not the superiority of divine rights over the statutory ones (the king approved of those last, too), but the honor of Polynices, his τιμή. Antigone acts thus not in defense of the divine right, but in defense of her brother’s honor and hers. She has qualified the ban on burying her brother to be one more ring in the chain of dishonor and disgrace in her family, and undertakes not only to protect her brother from disgrace by performing her act, but also to win fame at the same time. This is a knightly behavior reminding that of Achilles in the 18th Book of Illiad. Antigone preferred beautiful death (καλῶς θανεῖν) and glory to live like Achilles. This organic combination of deed, honor and glory is typically a Greek one, since - as Aristotle will have put it later - ᾽honor is sign of glory which is to take the other’s good into account’. Antigone achieves such a kind of εὐεργετικὴν δόξαν both in her own opinion and in that of the other characters of the play: Haimon, Teban people, or even the chorus itself. These two motives, honor and fame, are firmly connected to love of her brother, love meaning a closer tie owing a common descent from the same parents, and thus ϕιλία ἀδελϕική in Aristotelian sense. Sister’s love conceived this way compels Antigone to devote her life entirely for Polynices. Her love (φιλία) appeared not only in the words she has uttered, but also in her deeds performed in favor of others. Considering the noble descent brings on another important motive, also originating from Greek knightly ethos. This ‘εὐγένεια’ was also understood in a typically Greek (and Aristotelian) manner as the duty to behave nobly towards relatives, that of φίλοι and faithfulness to natural ties. All these themes, isolated as separate elements for the sake of analysis, are closely united and penetrating ones another in Sophocles’ play, because they originated from the knightly ethos, compelling to show noble descent, honor, glory, faithfulness to a friend, even at the cost of life. Beautiful death (καλῶς θανεῖν has become the very ideal and the best end of life. Antigone’s behavior conceived this way has restored to Sophoclean hero the Greek feature, altered by its modern interpretations which laid all their emphasis on religious motivations of the deed performed by Œdipus’ daughter. Meanwhile Antigone breaks Creon’s ban not to defend divine rights, but to honor her brother with burial and to win fame; if she has to refer to divine rights, its is only to prove her act not to be a profane one, despite of having flouted the king’s law