Greek Deities Shun Both Antigone and Creon

In ancient Greece, people told and heard stories of phenomena, supernatural beings, and gods to explain the origins of the world and events that transpired in human life. People worshipped those gods who were supposedly cruel and mischievous. Ancient Greeks believed the Fates controlled the destiny of humankind and each had their own job, and the Furies avenged crimes against blood kin. Clotho (the spinner) spun the web of life, Lachesis (the apportioner) measured the length and spun out the events of human lives, and Atropos (the inevitable) cut the web at its end. Underneath the verbal and moral battle between Antigone and Creon in Sophocles' play Antigone lies the fate of both characters and the rest of their family. Because of the family curse and their own actions, neither Antigone nor Creon can or should claim the support of the gods.

Despite Antigone's morals and her practice of those morals, she cannot escape the family curse. This "child of a wretched father" was doomed to suffer the gods' wrath (420). They "rocked [the] house to its foundation" (658), and "the ruin will never cease, cresting on and on from one generation on throughout the race" (659-660). The house had been rocked so much that only Ismene remains, and she lost the last thing that mattered to her--her sister Antigone, who surprisingly took her own life. Antigone asked, "What law of the mighty gods have I transgressed? Why look to the heavens any more, tormented as I am?" (1013-1014). She thought she must have been wrong, otherwise she wouldn't have questioned the gods nor taken her own life. Antigone also stated that "if this is the pleasure of the gods, once I suffer I will know that I was wrong" (1017-1018). She wouldn't have hanged herself if she truly believed the gods were on her side. The chorus warned that "one generation cannot free the next--some god will bring them crashing down" (670-671). Antigone's devotion to the death god caused her downfall. Since she was devoted to Hades, why didn't he save her? She waited for a sign that she acted in the gods' will, but she apparently never got the sign. She took her destiny into her hands and committed suicide. The events that Lachesis spun have led to the same inevitable fate that Atropos carries out for every person: the way in which Antigone met her fate is the only difference.

The curse didn't elude Creon either, despite his royalty. Consider the irony when he said, "it's Haemon's voice I think I hear or the gods have robbed me of my senses" (1342-1343). The gods must have robbed him of his common sense. He put his family on the backburner and condemned one of his slaughtered nephews and Antigone, all because of his pride and his greed for power. That pride and avariciousness turned into a burdened conscious, as he would have preferred Atropos to cut his web and die than live with the agony of his mistakes. The "best fate of all" that "brings the final day" was his version of freedom from the gods' punishment (1450). The guilt he carried crushed him, as he admitted it "can never be fixed on another man" and ordered to be taken away (1443), because he was "Nothing" (1446). The curse swallowed him whole.

In Greek mythology, the Erinnyes (otherwise known as the Furies) exercised their vengeance for those who committed crimes against the gods or against blood kin. Their punishment included wars, plagues, persecution and madness and continued after death and descent into the underworld. In the myth of Orestes, the Furies hounded him into insanity. His mother killed his father, therefore, Orestes killed his mother to avenge his father. This caused an insoluble dilemma for him, though, because then he was the killer of his own blood kin, and the Furies persecuted him as well. Creon faced a slightly similar family problem. He has one brother "crowned with a hero's honors" (220), and he ordered that no one "dignify [the other brother] for burial" (228). He honored the "patriot" brother over the "traitor" (233). He committed a crime against his nephew Polynices, as well as the gods, and continued his behavior with Antigone. After witnessing his son's death, Creon was only beginning to suffer the gods' "great weight shattering, driving [him] down that wild savage path"-- the path to insanity (1403-1404). His crown didn't save him. Creon had to suffer his fate, just like Orestes and other common men did.

Creon's actions provide a grim future for his city. Wars and plagues will stalk Thebes. As Tiresias says, "The day comes soon... when the mourning cries for men and women break throughout the halls" (1199-1201). Creon's pride "sets this on Thebes... so the gods are deaf to [their] prayers" (1123-1127). He cursed his own city through other cities' "tumult, whose mutilated sons the dogs have graced with burial... to... each warrior's hearth and home" with carrion (1202-1205). He is persecuted, as well as burdened, because "Great hatred rises against [him]" (1201). The Furies will bring war onto the city, the warriors will have their revenge on Creon, and the gods won't accept the offerings of Thebes.

Antigone escaped all of this but at the cost of her life. Perhaps thinking that the gods believed she was wrong was part of the reason for hanging herself. The thought of being alive and trapped in a dark, gloomy "recesses of the tomb" drover her a little insane and contributed to her suicide (1346), or perhaps being alive at all drove her mad. She did say, "if I were to die before my time I consider that a gain" (515), because "Who on earth alive in the midst of so much grief as I could fail to find death and a rich reward?" (516-518). Someone possibly had to be punished for Eteocles' and Polynices' actions, and Antigone could have been the chosen for insanity.

Despite who readers of Sophocles' play agree with or who they believe the gods agree with, the fact remains that no convincing evidence exists to support the theory that the gods side with Antigone or Creon. Evidence to the contrary is abundant. If nothing else convinces a reader, then perhaps Tiresias' recollection does: "I heard it... Talons flashing, ripping, they were killing each other... I... ignited the altar at all points--but... the god in the fire never blazed" (1107-1113). The talons symbolize the family: two brothers killing each other, Creon sentencing Antigone to die, Antigone opting to hang herself which leads Haemon to try and kill his father but getting killed himself instead, and as a result Creon's wife commits suicide. The gods don't show acceptance of this situation, because the family has been doomed into nonexistence. In the last words of the chorus, "The mighty words of the proud are paid in full with mighty blows of fate, and at long last those blows will teach us wisdom" (1468-1470). The pride of both Antigone and Creon proved to be their downfall... and their destiny.