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SophoclesAntigone
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Scene 5 and 5th Ode
Scene 5 and 5th Ode Summary
Singing to the people of Thebes, Antigone laments her coming death and loss of marriage rites. The Chorus reminds her that as she is “answering only to the law of yourself” (881), her death is a glorious one. Antigone compares herself to Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, who was transformed into stone by the gods. Antigone sees herself, like Niobe, ordained to die. The Chorus rebukes her for comparing herself to divine figures. Antigone grows angry that the Chorus is insulting her when she is still in their presence, knowing she will die so soon. The Chorus reminds her that she has acted against the law and that her cursed family history brought her this fate. Antigone laments this cruel family history.
Kreon enters and orders his men to take away Antigone and seal her in a cave. Antigone continues to lament her fate, questioning the will of the gods in allowing such a thing to happen when she has only shown reverence to her family. In her final words onstage, she instructs all still living to look and remember what she must suffer “for having been / Reverent towards reverence” (1,011), respectful to the necessity of reverential rites for the dead.
The Chorus sings an ode referencing other mythological figures destroyed by fate. The words compare Antigone to Danae, imprisoned in a tower. They also compare Kreon to Lycurgus, a king who offended Dionysus by persecuting the god’s worshippers, who, like Antigone, were female.
Scene 5 and 5th Ode Analysis
For the first half of this scene, only Antigone and the Chorus appear onstage. Here, the elders of the Chorus stand for the people of Thebes to whom Antigone rhetorically sings her lament. The entirety of the scene is characterized by Antigone’s shifts between self-pity and emotional strength. The Chorus, in turn, shifts between sympathy for Antigone and criticism of her acts. These two sets of shifting emotions would have allowed a range of pathos into the scene for the Athenian audience, their pity for Antigone rising with her own self-pity, and their acceptance of this fate rising with her acceptance and the Chorus’s critique. This pathos allows moments of catharsis that lead towards the release of the play’s final scene.
In her self-pity, Antigone experiences a clouded sense of judgment. She compares herself to the semi-divine figure of Niobe, which is beyond what the Chorus may accept. In the Chorus members’ admonition of this comparison and their reminder that Antigone’s fate was sealed by her family history, they show their ultimate deference to the power of fate and the gods over people. However, their lack of pity for Antigone is somewhat shocking, considering their woe at the end of the previous scene.
When Kreon enters and sentences Antigone, the audience is allowed its greatest moment of pity, and Antigone falls into a deep despair. She only recovers her characteristic strength as she is led away, instructing all those present to look upon her fate and see its injustice.
In the ode of the Chorus, Antigone’s place within the corpus of Greek myth is established: She is one of several women who suffer cruel fates at the hands of the gods. Because the Chorus cannot directly indict Kreon, it uses a comparison to the foolish King Lycurgus, punished by Dionysus, to indicate Kreon’s own foolishness and foreshadow his final punishment.
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By Sophocles
