Post by abasil9 on Sept 28, 2011 17:41:36 GMT -5
In Scene IV, Antigone’s acknowledgement and placement of the blame of her dire predicament on her seemingly cursed situation argues that she has adopted a fatalistic view of her situation. Unlike her father, the tragic hero Oedipus, Antigone believes that her capture and pending death was something predestined by the Gods, resulting from the “horror of mother and son mingling” (226). To illustrate this, Antigone first compares herself to Niobe, a figure from Greek mythology and “Tantalos’ wretched daughter”, comparing Niobe’s downfall to her own in that her curse was brought on by sins of her father. Antigone relates this to herself, saying “O Oedipus…Your marriage strikes from the grave to murder mine” (226). She seems assured that no matter what, she was predestined to fall victim to the curse of her father marrying his own mother and killing his father, a truly fatalistic point of view. While Antigone did want to respect the Gods by burying her brother, it is possible that it was more an act of defiance against the law of Creon that out of reverence for a higher power. While she claims, “I have done no wrong” in reference to Creon’s accusations, she does not deny that the outcome of her actions was inevitable, that she was determined to pay for the “crime, infection of all [her] family” (227,226). Antigone cries, “the blasphemy of my birth has followed me,” and Sophocles can make his point that unlike Oedipus, Antigone cannot believe her actions were of her own free will and is thus a fatalistic character (226).