also- if you are interested- I would ADORE a short analysis-post about Antigone!! I recently reread the Antigonick and I’m FALLING IN LOVE again with ✨her✨.
Antigone's story is really two stories: first, and foremost, it's a story about doing something because it's the right thing to do; it's a story of a woman fighting to bury her brother because it's the right thing to do. Well, if you call that law, says Antigone. Zeus does not. Justice does not. The dead do not. What they call law did not begin today or yesterday- when they say law they do not mean a statute of today or yesterday- they mean the unwritten-unfailing-eternal ordinances of the gods that no human being can ever out run. Of course I will die. Kreon or no Kreon... and death is fine, this has no pain: to leave a mother's son lying out there unburied: THAT would be pain.
To leave a mother's son lying out there unburied: THAT would be pain. A mother. Any mother. There are right things and there are wrong things, and these right things are eternal and unfailing; they are unwritten but they are known because it sits somewhere between our chest and our ribs and we owe it to people. Even if the result is death- especially, perhaps, if the result is death- Antigone proves that it is something to be done. Not everyone can be Antigone of course: Polynices must exist to provide a tragedy, and Eteocles must exist to exacerbate the tragedy, and Ismene must exist to show how someone can ignore the atrocity and not be an awful person. But Antigone- well, she exists, doesn't she? She is there, undying, unfailing; candle-bright and raw as her father, unbowed even before Kreon.
Even if it kills her: well, says Antigone. Well, death is fine, because it has no pain to her, not if the alternative is living in a world that would leave a man unburied out in the cold dust of the battlefield.
Not everyone can be Antigone, but the world is run by Antigones. By people that see awful awful things and think: no more. I stand here. Not one fucking inch less.
Which would be a powerful story alone, but the thing that really heightens Antigone to me is that it isn't just any mother's son lying out there in the cold dust of the battlefield: it's her mother's son. It's Jocasta's son, Antigone's brother, the boy she loved when she was a child; the boy she grew besides. It's the last thing she has of her family, isn't it? Antigone's lost everything else. Her father is blind and gone; her mother is dead at her own hand; Eteocles is dead at her brother's hand, Polynices at Eteocles' hand. Her pride and her history and her blood all; she has nothing left. She has nothing but her own assurances of what is right and what is good.
And that's the second story. Antigone, having lost everything else- still, still, having so much more to lose (Haemon, Ismene, Ismene-)- still chooses to bury Polynices. It's a story of forgiveness. It's a story of family. It's not just a story of duty, of completing one's duty: it's a story of knowing that your brother made mistakes, that you were owed better by your family and fate, that you didn't deserve any of this- and, still, steadily, unyieldingly, choosing to do the right thing. Choosing not to look away. Choosing not to keep silent, not to remain meek: choosing death, unflinchingly, unfailingly, eternally.
The first story is one of duty and right and wrong. The second story is one of family and forgiveness.
You can't separate one from the other, not without removing the core components of Antigonick, but they're two distinct threads.
I am born of love, says Antigone, after Kreon has tried to threaten her, has tried to dominate her, has tried to get her to express remorse. She has lost, remember, her father, her mother, her two brothers; she has nothing left, nothing except for the memories she had of them, memories tainted by the knowledge that their love should never have been allowed by the gods. This is a girl: this is a girl who has, I cannot stress this enough, lost everyone she ever loved in such a short and tragic and awful time. And she looks Kreon in the eye, Kreon who refused to bury her brother, Kreon who despises her father, and she says, I am born of love, not hatred.
areudirty
titsay
