Quotes Showing Loyalty In Antigone

Lily Stewart

Mr. Lovera

Honors 2

12 March 2023

Blinding Pride Everyone exhibits loyalty to ideas or people. It is nearly impossible to go through life without being devoted to something, even if only for a little while. When people demonstrate devotion or loyalty, they typically take pride in whatever they support because they think it is worthy of their devotion. People today take pride in their beliefs, but so did people a long time ago. In the play Antigone by Sophocles, the story follows Antigone, the niece of Creon, the king of Thebes, as she supports her beliefs. Antigone’s brothers Polynices and Eteocles were recently in a war against each other, Eteocles fighting for Thebes, and Polynices taking people from Argos to fight against Thebes.

In Antigone’s case, she becomes so focused on bringing glory to herself, she abandons her loyalty to the gods and their power. One of the first examples of this is when Ismene tries to help Antigone by taking some of the blame for burying Polynices, she bites back saying, “Who did the work? / Let the dead and the god of death bear witness!” (Sophocles 610-611). Antigone only includes the god of death, Hades. Throughout most of the play, Hades is the only god she acknowledges. It seems understandable for her to be loyal to him because when she dies, Hades will be the one who rules her eternity, but while she is alive there are other gods with power over her life and the world she lives in now. She calls on the god of death to watch and help her when she broke the law, but by breaking the law, specifically Creon’s law, she also goes against Zeus’s law because he holds the title of god of justice. By this logic, Antigone treats the gods the same way she treats her family: only some of them are important to her. In addition to this, as Antigone goes to the cave, she compares herself to the goddess Niobe, saying, “But think of Niobe--well I know her story-- / (...) / a rocky death like hers puts me to sleep” (Sophocles 915, 924). Antigone claims to understand what Niobe what through because she says she goes through the same thing. She elevates herself to the level of a goddess, which not only remains untrue but blasphemous. She essentially claims to be as important as a goddess, but she has no right to claim that about herself, especially because no evidence presents her as any better than the regular person. She is still mortal, she is punished for breaking the law just like everyone else, and she does not have powers of any kind so why should she be able to compare herself to a goddess? The