Empowerment Behind Antigone's Crime

Empowerment behind Antigone’s Crime In the case of Sophocles’ play Antigone, transgression of norms empowers Antigone to rise against the State. Three types of cultural norms are evident: the social norm, the gender norm, and the human norm. That is, people who rank below should always obey those above in a hierarchical society; a woman is always taught to be obedient (Sophocles 163); a human should desire to live, not to die, because life is privileged over death. However, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus the King, violates all three norms. She violates the social and gender norms by the rebellious act of burying her brother Polyneices against Creon’s proclamation, and the defiant speech against her uncle, Creon the King. Through these two

She acts even more unwomanly and her second burial is associated with sandstorm. The sentry describes that Antigone appears after a sudden squall which “lifted out of the earth a storm of dust, / a trouble in the sky […] filled the plain, / ruining all the foliage of the wood that was around it” (177). It is as if Antigone were the storm. The description of the sand storm creates the powerful imagery of chaos and disorder, where the storm is largely scaled, destructive, and sudden. Antigone is compared with the sand storm; it implies that she has power and her power is strong and destructive. She is capable of violating the order and the norms of the society. In the sentry’s description of the actual burial of Polyneices, Antigone cries out with “the shrill cry, [… bursts] out in groans, [and calls] terrible curses” when she sees the unburied body of her brother (177). Later, she proceeds with all the proper burial rituals and “crowned the corpse” (Sophocles 177). Her reaction towards the re-exposed body is presented as extremely unwomanly; and her crowning of Polyneices is similar to the crowning of a king. Antigone again breaks through the traditional female role and assumes an authoritative role, and thus possesses power. The imagery of power and the rejection of womanhood intertwines and

First, her loyalty to the dead can be explained with her incestuous bond toward her brother. Antigone declares that she would not bury her child or her husband “against the will of the city” if she had a child or a husband and if they were “dead and rotten,” but she would always choose to bury her “deeply loved” brother (196). She only loves her brother. Her love for her brother is even beyond her own desire for living. She has had a choice of the normal living path for a woman: to marry Haemon, the son of Creon and her betrothed, and to bear children. However, she chooses Polyneices over Haemon, her dead brother over her betrothed, death over life: a path to unite with her family and her brother. Although she never actually has sex with her brother, her incestuous obsession for her brother promotes her desire for death (Butler 10). Thus, she always honors the dead, and sets herself aside with the God of Death (Sophocles 178). She counts death “a profit” if she dies before her time (Sophocles 178). In addition, she has also been referred to as “the girl” throughout the play, because other people in the play see her as immature. She is not an adult women because she is “unbedded, without bridal, without share/ in marriage and in nurturing of children” (Sophecles 196). That is, without love, marriage, or children, her life is unwomanly. Moreover, Butler