Burial In Sophocles Antigone

vFate is defined as the development of events beyond a person’s control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power. Sophocles’s Antigone describes, among many things, the problems Antigone and Ismene face after their parents, Oedipus and Jocasta, and their brothers met their prophesied fate; death. Antigone and Ismene’s oldest brother, Eteocles, met death, but defended the homeland, Thebes, and was given an honorable burial and remembered pleasantly. Polynices, however, Antigone and Ismene’s other brother, was considered a traitor and condemned to a dishonorable death with no legal burial. Antigone and Ismene face challenges, mainly because of their contradictory beliefs, regarding the death of their family members, namely Polynices. In Sophocles’s Antigone, the two daughters of Oedipus, Antigone

After discovering the Creon’s news that Polynices would not be allowed to receive a proper burial, condemning him to a cursed afterlife as punishment for treason, Antigone and Ismene reacted very differently. Antigone believed that Polynices deserved a proper burial and was determined to bring honor to her family and her brother, regardless of the consequences. Ismene also believed in bringing honor to her family, but had very little opinion toward Polynices’s burial. Instead, Ismene argued with Antigone that suffering for their deceased brother would solve nothing. Ismene argued that everyone in their family except themselves and their uncle, Creon, had faced death and facing it themselves would solve nothing. Ismene believed that following Creon’s law, following the rules of Thebes, and keeping her family’s bloodline alive would bring honor to her family, but Antigone believed in bringing honor to the dead, even if it meant she suffered. Ismene and Antigone portray it differently, but they both believe in bringing honor to their