The concept of citizenship and the duties that citizens owe to the state were subjects of huge importance and debate in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens, where Sophocles lived and where Antigone was first performed. Antigone and Creon represent the extreme opposite political views regarding where a citizen of a city should place his or her loyalties.
In the play, Creon has a strict definition of citizenship that calls for the state to come first: "…whoever places a friend / above the good of his country, he is nothing: / I have no use for him." From Creon's perspective, Polynices has forfeited the right to a proper burial as a citizen of Thebes because he has attacked the city. In attacking Thebes, he has shown his disloyalty to the state and has ceased to be a citizen. In fact, Creon is more devoted to his laws than he is to even his own son Haemon's happiness, refusing to pardon Antigone for burying Polynices even though she is Haemon's fiancée. Antigone, on the other hand, places long held traditions and loyalty to her family above obedience to the city or to its ruler. In doing so, she makes the case that there are loyalties to both the gods and one's own family that outweigh one's loyalty to a city.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Citizenship vs. Family Loyalty ThemeTracker
Citizenship vs. Family Loyalty Quotes in Antigone
to please the dead than please the living here:
in the kingdom down below I'll lie forever.
nothing as great as death without glory.
and the mood and mind for law that rules the city—
all these he has taught himself
and shelter from the arrows of the frost
when there's rough lodging under the cold clear sky
and the shafts of lashing rain—
ready, resourceful man!
Never without resources
never an impasse as he marches on the future—
only Death, from Death alone he will find no rescue
but from desperate plagues ha has plotted his escapes.
passionate, wild…
she hasn't learned to bend before adversity.
like a mortal enemy—let the girl go.
Let her find a husband down among the dead.
show me a greater crime in all the earth!
the gift of eloquence, he and no one else,
and character too…such men, I tell you,
spread them open—you will find them empty.
smashing against the high throne of Justice!
Your life's in ruins, child—I wonder…
do you pay for your father's terrible ordeal?
