"Powerful Woman, Forceful Man"
...o had buried the corpse against his ordinance: “I’m not the man, not now: she is the man / if this victory goes to her and she goes free” (541-42). Next, we are to see Creon’s utter wrath in sentencing Antigone: Never! Sister’s child or closer in blood than all my family clustered at my alter worshiping Guardian Zeus---she’ll never escape, she and her blood sister, the most barbaric death. (343-46) As the brute leader orders his guards to take Antigone away, he does not forget to leave out his belief that man is superior to woman: “From now on they’ll act like women,” he raves, as if a woman’s proper place is to be locked up in a cell (652). We can easily see that not only does Creon use force, he abuses it in addressing the people of Thebes, be they patrons of his laws or not. He even talks down to his own son, Haemon, resenting the fact that he doesn’t consider Antigone’s actions as treasonous. Creon fails to see that even “The whole city of Thebes denies it…” (820). It is as if the whole world is against him from his own eyes. Haemon further emphasizes this in saying, “What a splendid king you’d make of a desert island-- / you and you alone” (826-27). The tension further escalates between father and son until Haemon, aghast at his father’s ruthless temperament, deems him incompetent as a ruler: “If you weren’t my father, I’d say you were insane” (847). Shortly thereafter, Haemon rushes from the palace, never to return to such hopeless leadership as his father’s. Contrary to Creon’s behavior, Antigone’s is that of true power, showing valor towards the gods in honoring her brother in death. Although she knows the ultimate price for denouncing the king’s orders, she does not listen to her head. She knows in her heart, as Polynices’ sister in the flesh, that she must lay his soul to rest; that it may have peace in the underworld: I’ll bury him myself. And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I’ll lie with the one I love and loved by him— an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer to please the dead than please the living here: in the kingdom down below I’ll lie forever. (85-90) Her heroism goes undaunted as she stands up to the tyrant, Creon, in his attempts to quiet her courage, in stating that death and proper burial is not something for the living to tamper with: Nor did I think your edict had such a force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. (503-05) One of the leaders of the king’s council admits that Antigone’s stubborn strength under pressure is much like that of her father, Oedipus, unprecedented, with one exception: she’s a woman, not a man: Like father, like daughter, passionate, wild… she hasn’t learned to bend before adversity. (525-27) It could perhaps be inferred that even the Chorus, a body of wise, elderly citizens of Thebes acting as a historically informative, group conscience of the play, though mocking her at the time, secretly agrees with Antigone’s display of courage: And yet, of course, it’s a great thing for a dying girl to hear, just hear she shares a destiny equal to the gods, during life and later, once she’s dead. (926-29) Although Antigone’s bold and daring act to stand up against the law-maker of the land, Creon, may be glorified, the actual pain and suffering she goes through as the result of her uncle’s forcefulness is perhaps most powerful in illuminating her brazen spirit. She has trudged the road to her fateful destiny alone: No one to weep for me, my friends, no wedding-song—they take me away in all my pain…the road lies open, waiting. (962-64) Creon’s sentence to hold her in a small earthen chamber with barely enough to survive has placed Antigone in limbo: between life and death, neither truly living, nor truly dying: Look on me, you noble sons of Thebes— The last of a great line of kings, I, al...