Examples Of Fatal Power Struggles In Antigone

It’s a Fatal Power Struggle

In Sophocles’s Antigone, Antigone recognizes her arrogance as she faces the effects of hubris before she irrationally commits suicide. Antigone’s overconfidence causes her to fatally act out in order to convince Creon that she has the power of choice over her own future. Earlier, after breaking the law declared by Creon, Antigone assumes she will be exonerated for preserving familial loyalties; however, she is proven incorrect as the King condemns her to death. While at first, she dismisses the idea of being killed for her actions, later she begins to accept her fate and even welcome it: “Look upon me, friends, and pity me / Turning back at the night’s edge to say / Good-by to the sun that shines for me no longer”

(225). Antigone’s sarcastic usage of addressing the King’s guards as “friends” underlines how she taunts them, as if revealing they are fighting for the same side. She sets up the situation in a way which assumes both Creon and Antigone hold the power and each disregard the strength in the other. Antigone continues by saying “pity me”, for she desires the people to feel guilty for her death, but says that she is “turning back at the night’s edge”, where it is her choice to remove herself from life. She contradicts herself in order to assume power and make Creon at fault for her death, when in fact it is she at fault. Antigone wishes “Good-by to the sun that shines for [her] no longer”, where she somewhat cheerfully understands that she will be spending the rest of her existence in the underworld and believes she is too influential to be forgotten in the world of the living. While others continue to live on, Antigone knows that she will be gone physically as revealed by saying “for [her]”, rather than simply stating that the sun will not shine at all. Further, Antigone emphasizes her presumed innocence as she says “as men’s young hearts know, I have done no wrong, / I have not sinned before God. Or if I have, / I shall know the truth in death” (227-8). Antigone describes men with “young hearts”, otherwise stating that they are pure, dissimilar to the hearts of Creon and his men. She insults Creon to place herself above him and says that she has “done no wrong”, which indirectly states that it is Creon who is incorrect and has “sinned before God”. By shifting the blame of her eventual death, Antigone tries to depict herself as a victim of the encounter who faces a false crime. However, she then says that she will “know the truth in death”, unafraid to die and finally see the truth as she assumes that she is the one who will prevail.
Moreover, Antigone takes her own life in order to validate that she holds power and to make sure that she dies with honor. After Creon changes his mind about killing Antigone, she states that Creon “will remember / What things [she suffered]” (228). Antigone struggles within herself to accept her death at first, but after she warms up to the idea, Antigone then assumes her life is over. However, once she realizes her execution will no longer take place, she knows Creon will have won this power struggle. as he has single-handedly changed her life. Unable to deal with the fact that she will lose to the king, Antigone threatens him by saying that he “will remember”, for she knows that Creon will be pained by this loss. Antigone’s inability to confront a loss of power causes her to react pompously, ultimately ending in her defeat in death.