What Makes Right?

An Essay on Antigone

Angel C. Aquino

Freedoms I

Dr. Roberta Bayer

September 3, 2024

Word Count: 771

 What is Right?
An Essay on Antigone

The story of Antigone, told in a play by Sophocles, is one of intra-family strife with

moral implications. Two of her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, die in combat for opposing

sides. However, by the decree of their uncle Creon1, Polynices will not receive the burial rites

and instead be left unburied and exposed to the elements as a warning to dissidents. Polynices

fought against Thebes with the support of Thebes’ known enemies. It is in the backdrop of these

events that Antigone finds herself convicted by her conscience and by the authority of Thebes.

Antigone’s dialogue in the play continually reaffirms the idea that anthropocentric

hierarchy can be flawed and is not the ultimate arbiter of objective morality. To provide a

justification for her administration of burial rites to her brother, she argues that disobeying

Creon, and thus violating the laws that he draws his authority from, is not inherently a crime.

This is the case because the laws were not directly laid down by the gods, and by denying the

burial rite, Creon is actually violating the god’s ‘unfailing, unwritten laws…[that] live for all

time.”2 She appeals to a higher, transcendent power, which gives her the conviction to take

responsibility for her administration of burial rites3 and be unafraid of the consequences.4

Creon’s response is ironic; he accuses Antigone of being prideful and arrogant because she broke

established law, namely his edict. He says to her: “the mind that is most rigid stumbles soonest”5.

Creon also invokes order and social hierarchy to justify his attacks on Antigone; he says that

women should not be free6 and must be controlled to prevent disorder, strife, and disgrace within

1
Creon is the ruler of Thebes
2
Michael Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory (Hackett Publishing Company 2011), 11 v. 449
3
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 11, v. 443
4
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 11, v. 463-469
5
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 11, v. 473-474
6
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 14, v. 578-579
a family to maintain a facade of dignity to outsiders.7 His greatest appeal is that anarchy is the

greatest threat to an ordered society, but the solution to that is total adherence to the established

hierarchy. To him, surrender and deference to the words of a woman, Antigone, is irrational and

will lead to disorder and ought to be avoided, to the point that he’d rather be corrected by a man.8

Later on in the play, Haemon, his son and Antigone’s fiance, makes 3 statements in a respectful

retort to his father. First, the gods give sense (or rationality) to human beings, which establishes

them as an authority and source of discernment and right.9 Second, Haemon challenges the

deference to authority by saying that his father should consider the merits of what he is being

told as separate from his age.10 Third, he says his father has no respect if he tramples on the

rights of gods, thus making obedience or disobedience to the gods the ultimate litmus test for

right and wrong. This seems to say that Creon's articulation of a hierarchy that makes things right

is improperly ordered because he is not respecting and giving deference to the gods. When Creon

mocks him for ‘submitting’ to a woman by agreeing with Antigone, Haemon responds by saying

that the gods are on her side on this matter, again appealing to a higher authority.11

Creon’s end previously manifested itself in his own words; he is the man whose ‘rigid

mind stumbles the soonest.’ Clinging to erroneous tradition and a flawed order, he disregards the

transcendent truth in the pleas of Antigone, the wisdom in the criticism of his son Haemon, and

the counsel in the exhortations of Tiresias, a prophet of Apollo.12 While he does execute

Antigone, her only regret is that she suffers injustice at the hands of the authorities and will never

have a family. In fact, she challenges the gods to hold to their own conventions.13 Creon outlives

7
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 15, v. 660-662
8
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 15-16, v. 675-680
9
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 16, v. 683-684
10
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 17, v. 728-729
11
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 17, v. 749
12
He visits him after a second exchange with Antigone.
13
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 20, v. 924-928
her, but it is his mind is driven to remorse by the suicides of Haemon14 and his wife, Euridicye.15

In a dark and brutal way, he fulfills his own prediction by retrospectively admitting his own guilt

and culpability16, an indirect admission of his flawed moral paradigm. With this end, Sophocles

makes clear in his play that a rightly ordered respect acknowledges the transcendent law of the

gods as supreme and having precedence over human conventions and authority. He warns that

‘fate has a terrible power’17 and ‘a mortal has no escape from fate’18. Creon’s insistence on order

and obedience turns into irrational stubbornness because he ends up going against the ultimate

arbiter of right and wrong, and suffers by the mysterious hands of the Fates. He suffers for his

hypocrisy; he demands obedience to human convention but does not submit himself to the

supreme divine order. For these reasons, Sophocles concludes his play by saying ‘reverence for

the gods must never cease’.19

14
He is driven to suicide due to the death of Antigone
15
She is driven to suicide because of the grief attributed to the death of her son, and blames her husband for his
death.
16
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 29, v. 1318-1326
17
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 21, v. 951
18
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 30, v. 1338
19
Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory 30, v. 1348-1350
 Bibliography

Morgan, Michael, ed. Classics of Moral and Political Theory. Indianna: Hackett Publishing
Company, 2011.