Sophocles Antigone Character Analysis

In Sophocles’ Antigone, the king, Creon, is driven mad by the deaths he caused, those of his niece, son, and wife, and Antigone, Creon’s niece, is killed for doing what she believes to be right. He represents the consequences of their actions, Antigone’s death and Creon’s descent into madness, by mentioning of several Greek myths. He also uses these myths to illustrate the emotions that drive each character to act.

Sophocles first introduces mythology in the prologue, when Antigone says to her sister, Ismene that she should bury her brother, a traitor, in spite of Creon’s edict, rather than spurn the, “laws of the god,”(Sophocles 63). She is driven to bury her brother both out of a sense of family loyalty, and a sense of duty to the gods. From the very beginning of the play, the gods shape character’s actions, even without any direct interaction. The gods continue to influence both the characters’ actions and their fates.

This echoes the punishment of Danae, mother of Perseus, who was a demigod son of Zeus. She was thrown into a similar cell after a prophecy was issued that her child would grow up to kill his grandfather, her father, the king of Argos. Zeus visited her in her cell, impregnating her. I feel that this was a blessing, as was Antigone’s suicide. Both women found a way, or a way found them, to take back some measure of control, of freedom, back from their captors. Danae defied her father by bearing a son in spite of all his precautions, and Antigone defied Creon by choosing to die by her own hand, in her own way, rather than let him decide how she would join the