Antigone Death Motif

No individual can ever be the most powerful. The power of the divine will always end up being right and the most powerful. No matter what religion one believes in, it is important to remember this. Creon, in Sophocles’ drama must successfully govern over his city. One of his first decisions as king is to deny Polyneices of a burial, as he attacks the city, Thebes, to claim the throne. This law that Creon makes is completely against the laws of the gods. Polyneices’ sister, Antigone believes in the power of the gods and decides to honor their law instead of Creon’s law by defying Creon and burying her brother. Within Sophocles’ Antigone, the use of the death motif suggests the world to be a place where no matter how much power one may have,

It is first introduced when the chorus magnifies the powers of man and their great abilities. The chorus exalts thebes in this ode and even denounces Polyneices which is against what the gods would think. During this Ode, even though there is a lot of praise for man, the chorus states: “He [man] has made himself secure - from all but one: In the late wind of death he cannot stand” (Sophocles 38). Man may have been greatly exalted throughout the ode but there is one thing that man cannot control which is death. The diction, “he cannot stand” shows the extreme weakness of man when it comes to death. Not only do people get extremely scared of death, but they cannot even stand in the face of death. It simply implies how little power man really has, even when it may seem that they can control so much. Theoi is demonstrated here because the power of death is the power of the gods, as they can choose when and how people die, truly showing that the divines’ power cannot be retaliated. Even though Creon is a very powerful character in Antigone, the gods are even more powerful. This is clear when Creon is punished for not following the laws of the gods. He learns his mistake but clearly it is too late as he must now suffer knowing how wrong he