Resistance

Sophocles' Antigone, written in 441 B.C., 2500 years ago, opens in the aftermath of war. Antigone, devoted daughter of Oedipus, of the cursed line of Kadmos, is the defiant heroine lamenting the death of her twin brothers, "two brothers, a double death in a single hour." 
Brothers divided. Eteocles fought for Thebes, and Polyneices fought for Argos against Thebes.

As in all wars, each side felt itself in the right. Both sides exhibited sacrifice, courage, honor.
Acting against the new edict of her uncle King Creon forbidding the burial of the traitorous Polyneices, Antigone takes a handful of dust and symbolically buries him. A gentle burial.

A simple gesture. One of literature’s first acts of civil disobedience.

Antigone is a woman, however, and traditionally the role of a Greek woman is that of mourning.
Not that of resistance to the Law.

In Homer's epic, woman is more docile. Penelope waits patiently for twenty years  for Odysseus' meandering return home to Ithaka. Penelope at her loom, weaving and unweaving.
 
In Wallace Stevens' modern poem The World as Meditation, Ulysses is the interminable adventurer. He exists solely in imagination, yet Penelope waits and weaves, " never forgetting him that kept coming constantly so near." Woman as dutiful wife, ever faithful and serene.

But this is tragedy. This is Sophocles, so we know that the world will cave inevitably, inexorably in.

Antigone is no waiter. No weaver. No wife. She is an activist.  An individual motivated by love, social justice, and moral outrage. A daughter, a sister, and a woman.


Her traits? Uncompromising determination, a sense of her own worth, a quickness to stand by her beliefs, a readiness for self-sacrifice, a sense of duty and personal honor, a refusal to surrender. A quiet grace. A way with words. And an action plan:  that handful of dust.

These are all the makings and qualities of a heroic temper -- the temperament of a fine athlete, actress, artist, debater, doctor, entrepreneur, corporate exec, teacher -- which requires discipline, effort, stamina, tactics, performance, victories of some sort.

Antigone is a warrior who stands up for her values, who resists her uncle's rampant ideology.
In the 20th century Antigone was a powerful symbol of the French resistance against Nazi oppression in WW II (see Brecht and Anouilh's versions).

Why read Antigone? Because she is a leader to emulate, both good to great, and built to last.

In a somber world, against the dark mysteries of human and divine dispensation, natural catastrophe and randomness, Antigone’s courage and steadfastness are a gleam of light.

She represents logos, the power of the word, and  noumenos, the power of mind.  Attunement.

She understands what the people want, and her act of civil disobedience challenges Creon and his belief in the polis.

Antigone, however, believes in human rights. She understands the human dimension, the personal, that “there are honors that are due to all the dead.” 

Why remember Antigone?

Because she reflects the consolation that the carnage and chaos of war can offer. She is a magnificent reminder that it is heroic  to meet the finality of death with a greatness of soul.

A simple act , facing death heroically...which, because it is so purely human, brings honor to us all.