Theme of Death in Sophocles' Antigone Essay Example
Death has always held a fascination for humanity. It has been feared, respected, studied, and questioned by every culture and time period to exist, but no matter what we do, death is and will always be one big question mark. Within the current scope of human perspective, we cannot know with provable certainty what happens when our bodies cease to function, and because of that, vastly different practices regarding the treatment of the bodies of the departed have sprung up across the world and history.
Sophocles’ play Antigone is no exception to this idea. Through the central conflict of the play, Sophocles uses various characters, particularly Antigone and Kreon, to exemplify some of the ideas Athenians of the time had about what death was, and how the dead should be treated. It takes barely five lines of dialogue before Antigone poses the question, “Has not Kreon honored only one of our two brothers with a tomb, and dishonored the other?” (Sophocles 21-22). As that passage continues, and we learn of The circumstances in which Kreon has forbidden the burial of Antigone’s brother Polyneices, we also discover just how significant burial rites are to the Athenians. Antigone believes that failure on her part to bury Polyneices not only prevents his soul from moving on to the underworld but also leaves her to be judged harshly in the land of the dead. While the play does not describe the required burial rites in their entirety, we do learn that a physical covering of the body in dirt (whether through an initial light dusting or full-on earthen burial) is an essential aspect of the process (Sophocles 255-260). It seems as if the physical protection burial offers a body from wild animals is mirrored in the eyes of the Athenians by spiritual protection of some kind as well. The simple fact that the two most antithetical characters in the play both assign such importance (with Kreon seeing refusing burial as the greatest insult he could, and Antigone prizing it above her own life) to the particulars of burial rites, tells us that the Athenians would find it unthinkable to dismiss death as insignificant.
We learn yet more of the Greek view of death later on in the play when Kreon sets Antigone’s method of execution. Rather than killing her outright, Kreon orders her entombed with a little food so that she will eventually die of starvation instead of by his hand (Sophocles 773-780). We can see that Kreon believes that the method in which a person goes into death can have repercussions for mortals still living. He fears the mythic vengeance of the furies for raising a hand against his kin, and so once again, Athenian philosophy of death dictates the actions of a living character (Sophocles 1074-1076). We also see a continuation of the idea that the dead are the responsibility of their family, a point that is reinforced still a third time in the finale of the play. As Kreon’s family fall to suicide one by one around him, we are left knowing that Kreon is responsible. Or, at the very least, that Kreon believes himself responsible for their deaths (Sophocle 1338-1346). The tragedy in the royal family is not a weight on the people of Athens, it is a burden of responsibility for Kreon alone to bear.
The views that Antigone represents are only one perspective on death though. When we pose the same questions to modern society, the answers we reach can be very different. It is worth saying that we cannot represent the entire contemporary world with a single philosophy, as the global society we exist in today is massively pluralistic. Rather, when I speak of modern society here, I am referring to the narrow lens I have been able to view in my own life as a young American on a highly progressive and socially liberal college campus.
Our contemporary treatment of the dead is far more individualized than the one represented in Antigone. To many, protecting the sanctity of a person’s corporeal form means honoring their personal wishes rather than a societal tradition. The question has become, “what do you want to happen to your body when you die?” This is consistent with many of the core values ingrained in citizens of America because as a whole, we prize a sort of rugged individualism far more than most other places in the world of any era. Some people continue to answer that question because of their religious beliefs, while others turn to moral, ethical, environmental, aesthetic, or other concerns to find their choice. Furthermore, I have noticed a trend of disdain towards entombment in the friends and family I have discussed death with. To most of the peers I have asked, being “trapped” in a coffin, casket, or another earthen tomb is the worst thing they can imagine. Many more of them want their bodies to be used for science, organ donation, or as fertilizer through cremation. I would postulate that this trend is primarily because of modern science. We simply have more knowledge of how to utilize a body to improve the world in some small way than Athenians at the time of Antigone did.
But not every aspect of funerary proceedings has changed between the world of the Athenians and ours. It still holds true that families are very much responsible for their dead. It is the parents, partners, children, or similarly close individuals that are typically left to try and fulfill the wishes of the departed. So much so that much of the capitalistic enterprise of the funeral industry is centered around taking advantage of that sense of moral responsibility for profit.
It is unlikely that death will lose importance to any society. As humans have an inherent drive to investigate that which we do not understand, It would be hard to see us giving up on one of the biggest philosophical questions of all time. But as technological and scientific understanding grows, our treatment of the dead will, without question, continue to evolve as well.
