Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Antigone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Blindness vs. Sight
Natural Law
Citizenship vs. Family Loyalty
Civil Disobedience
Fate vs. Free Will
Summary
Analysis
Creon asks Haemon if he comes in anger or obedience. Haemon says he will obey Creon. Creon is pleased, and delivers a lecture on a son's obedience to his father and the importance of not losing one's head over a bad woman. He tells Creon to let Antigone go.
Creon says that had he not punished Antigone's defiance of the rule of law, it would be like inviting anarchy to destroy the city. The fact that Antigone is a woman, Creon adds, is a further reason why she must not be allowed to defy him. The leader of the chorus says that this sounds sensible.
Haemon tells Creon that it's not his place to correct the king, but that the rumors in the street are that the people are sympathetic to Antigone. The people are afraid of Creon, but they believe Antigone should be allowed to bury her brother. Haemon asks his father to realize that he may have made a mistake. He pleads with his father not to be so rigid.
Creon reacts with anger at his son's offering of advice. Again he calls Antigone a traitor. Haemon says the people of Thebes do not see it that way. Creon responds, "And is Thebes about to tell me how to rule? ... Am I to rule this land for others—or myself?"
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The king and his son continue to argue. Creon accuses Haemon of supporting Antigone against his father. Haemon responds that he is trying to keep his father from committing an injustice. The argument grows more heated and Creon hurls stronger and stronger insults at his son. Haemon threatens that Antigone's death will cause another death. At last, Haemon rushes away, saying that Creon will never see him again.
The leader of the chorus worries that Haemon may do something violent. Creon doesn't care. He decides to spare Ismene, but says that he will take Antigone into the wilderness and enclose her in a vault with just a bit of food. Either the god she seems to love—Death—will save her, or "she may learn at last… what a waste of breath it is to worship Death."
Creon's method of executing Antigone is interesting. By entombing a living person (Antigone) and denying burial to a dead person (Polynices), Creon's laws seem to go against common sense, tradition, and nature itself.
Themes
The chorus offers a chant about love, a force that can't be conquered, that taunts people and makes them do crazy things. Guards bring Antigone from the palace. The chorus is heartbroken at the sight of her.
Antigone laments her fate, and the fact that she will never experience the joys of marriage. She further laments the horror of her coming death. The chorus tells her she went too far in her protests, and wonders if she is continuing to suffer for the sins of her father, Oedipus. The mention of her father and his fate stirs Antigone to more intense mourning. The chorus tells Antigone, "Your own blind will, your passion has destroyed you." Creon enters, and tells the guards to interrupt her lament, to take her away, build a tomb, and place her in it.
Antigone come to terms with the consequences of her decision, and sadness has at least for the moment replaced defiance. The chorus is sympathetic, but points out that Antigone kept pushing when she could have given up. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus insists on uncovering the truth about his past, even when others have warned him that doing so will destroy him. Like her father, Antigone brings on her own demise.
Themes
Antigone continues to mourn her life and death. She says that she would not have done what she did—disobey the laws to bury her brother—for a husband or a child, because one may find another husband or have another child. But because her parents are dead, she'll never have another brother.
Antigone here seems to go against her earlier claim that all the dead must be treated equally. Her shift suggests that Antigone may be softening, giving Creon an opportunity to show mercy.
Themes
As she's led away, Antigone calls out that she is being punished for her devotion to the gods. She then begs the gods to punish Creon as terribly as he is punishing her if they agree with her that Creon has defied their laws.
The chorus chants about other figures of mythology who were entombed alive. All of them were kings or children of gods, yet even they could not escape their fates, just as Antigone cannot escape hers.
