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Inevitability Of Human Life In Sophocles's 'Antigone'

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‘Sophocles, because he was a great artist, had something more important to do even than to make beautiful plays, namely to express as directly as his medium allowed certain tragic ideas which sprung out of a certain apprehension about human life.’ (H.D.F. Kitto) Consider the merits of this statement with reference to Sophocles’ play Antigone. Putting the words tragic ideas and apprehension about human life in the one sentence is not something we do every day, but if we look at history throughout time, dealing with inevitability of death is something we do every day of our lives and always have. Death is inevitable for every human being, some people choose to use religion as a means to deal with it, others choose living life to the full with extreme sports, and others choose a life full of doom and gloom, drugs, crime or alcohol. Regardless of how we choose to live our lives it can be said that Sophocles was just merely getting the people in Athens to think about their actions while they were on this earth, and realise, that regardless of whether you believe in the archaic gods, or a god, or the king of the city as the supreme chief, and whether you will go to heaven or hell or be reunited with your loved ones after you die, your actions will always have consequences. Context is important when it comes to looking at Antigone but it doesn’t mean that Antigone the play and the morals that Sophocles wanted to be see can only be used in ancient times, if anything it has survived

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