Sophocles, Antigone
Essay Questions
Arts One, Repetition/Compulsion, Fall 2014
1. Consider the significance of the following comment by Tiresias to the overall themes you identify in
the play Antigone
“Nobles of Thebes,
We two have come one common path,
One man watching the way for both.
The blind must walk where others lead.” (Pg, 59)
2. It has been suggested that Antigone is “not human.” What might motivate such a view, and is it
defensible?
3. What is the relationship between language and power in Antigone?
4. The German philosopher Hegel regards Antigone as a tragic stalemate between two equally
justifiable views. Suggest why this is, or is not, a persuasive reading.
5. What does the chorus in Antigone add to the overall meaning and impact of the play?
6. Why does Creon tell Haemon that it is worse to give way to a woman than a man? What does the
play as a whole suggest about the place of women?
7. Using the criteria of good government established by Plato in Republic, what sort of ruler would he
find in Creon and/or how happy would he be to have Sophocles’ version of the story performed in the
“Kalipolis” should it come into being?
8. Explore the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices and its connection to her attitude to
married life.
9. “I come as a stranger always to the home hearth/ of humans and spirits both, / an alien only, among
the living and the dead” (Sophocles 54).
In what way(s) does it make sense to think of Antigone as a stranger, an alien?
10. Compare the use of the imagery of the ship of state in Plato’s Republic and Sophocles’ Antigone.