To what extent does the audience empathize with Antigone’s actions/intentions?
Alexandre Silva
To what extent does the audience empathize with Antigone’s actions/intentions?
In the play “Antigone” written by Sophocles he talks about how the King of Thebes, Creon, loses everything by wanting to punish his son’s fiancé, Antigone, with death. Along the play there are three main actions from Antigone, which somehow affect the audience. Her important actions start at the beginning of the play when she decides to bury her brother Polynices defiling Creon's strict orders. As the play keeps going we understand that Antigone starts regretting what she did to her brother and this is when we get to the second main action/intention. The play finishes with her third and last action where she hangs herself in the tomb where she was locked to death.
The whole play starts with a discussion between the two sisters, Antigone and Ismene. This is the moment where Antigone decides to bury her brother Polynices by her own hands. She was warned by her sister that for what she was about to do, she would be punished to death. However, Antigone never gave up and followed the unalterable laws of the Gods. Antigone could not bear to watch her brother become consumed by vultures' talons and dogs. Turning to Ismene she explains “I will bury him myself. And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory” (Antigone line 85-86) this is the point of the play we understand how important the burial of her brother was to her. She was obeying the rules of her gods, which were that any dead body must be given a proper burial. The audience starts here empathizing with Antigone because her action was honorable. She stood up to the highest of powers so she could honor her brother, knowing the consequence would be death.
