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Antigone: Summary & Analysis

Sophocles Tragedy Play

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Summary of Antigone

Antigone is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, first performed around 441 BC, the third of his three Theban plays. After the brothers Eteocles and Polynices kill each other fighting over the throne of Thebes, the new ruler Creon decrees that Eteocles be buried with honor while the traitor Polynices be left unburied on pain of death. Their sister Antigone defies the edict to bury her brother, insisting that divine law outweighs Creon's command; Creon condemns her to death, and by the time he relents, Antigone, his son Haemon, and his wife Eurydice have all died, leaving him utterly ruined.

Plot summary

Sophocles compresses the action into a single day, using the chorus of Theban elders to comment on the escalating collision between Antigone's conscience and Creon's authority.

Beginning

In the aftermath of the civil war for Thebes, in which the brothers Eteocles and Polynices killed one another, King Creon decrees that Eteocles receive an honorable burial while Polynices, deemed a traitor, be left to rot unburied, with death as the penalty for defiance. Antigone tells her sister Ismene she intends to bury Polynices regardless; Ismene, afraid, refuses to help.

Rising action

Antigone buries her brother's body and is caught. Brought before Creon, she does not deny the act but defends it, arguing that the unwritten laws of the gods demand a brother's burial and outrank any king's edict. Creon, enraged by her defiance and unwilling to be overruled by a woman, condemns her to be sealed alive in a tomb, despite the pleas of his son Haemon, who is engaged to Antigone.

Ending

The blind prophet Tiresias warns Creon that the gods are angered and that his refusal to bury Polynices and his condemnation of Antigone will bring disaster. Creon finally relents and rushes to free Antigone — but too late: she has hanged herself in the tomb, Haemon kills himself over her body, and on hearing the news, Creon's wife Eurydice takes her own life as well. Creon is left alive but destroyed, having lost everything to his own inflexible pride.

Characters & setting

The play's power lies in the fact that both Antigone and Creon can claim a form of right, turning the tragedy into a genuine conflict of principles rather than a simple story of hero and villain.

Antigone

Antigone embodies loyalty to family and divine law, willing to die rather than leave her brother unburied. Her absolute conviction makes her heroic but also uncompromising, and Sophocles presents her defiance as both admirable and, in its rigidity, part of the tragedy.

Creon

Creon represents the authority of the state and civil law; his insistence on order is not baseless, but his pride and refusal to bend — even when warned by the gods — transform legitimate authority into destructive tyranny, and he alone survives to bear the full weight of the catastrophe.

Ismene, Haemon and Tiresias

Ismene's caution contrasts with Antigone's boldness; Haemon's failed appeal to his father shows reason defeated by pride; and the prophet Tiresias delivers the divine warning that finally, too late, breaks Creon's resolve.

Themes, symbols & analysis

Antigone has been read for centuries as a foundational text on the conflict between individual conscience and state power, invoked by philosophers and political movements alike.

Divine law versus human law

The central conflict pits Antigone's belief in the eternal, unwritten laws of the gods against Creon's insistence on the authority of the state's edicts — a clash Sophocles refuses to resolve simply, giving weight to both claims.

Pride and its consequences

Creon's hubris — his refusal to yield or admit error until it is too late — is the engine of the tragedy, and the play dramatizes how inflexible pride in a ruler brings ruin not only on himself but on everyone around him.

The individual against the state

Antigone's solitary defiance of an unjust law has made the play a lasting symbol of civil disobedience and the conscience of the individual set against the power of the state.

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