Oedipus Plays: Antigone, Symbols

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Antigone’s Tomb

Creon chooses to execute Antigone by sealing her in a tomb alive. As Tiresias points out, Creon has ordered that a dead body (Polynices’s) be left above ground and has ordered the entombment of a live person. Antigone’s live entombment is a symbol of Creon’s perversion of the natural order of things, which violate the social and religious customs of death and meddles with the affairs of the underworld.