Post by dbrotman on Oct 2, 2011 10:57:12 GMT -5
The rise in Antigone's stature is due to the honorable act of burying her brother; her fall however stems from the self pity she pours forth in scene four. It is a given that Antigone is just in her motives to '"bury [Polynices]...that this is a holy crime"' (192). Even the people believe that '"no woman has ever, so unreasonably died so shameful a death for a generous act"' (218). Before this moment she was just like any other bizarrely conceived, former king's daughter, but now she is a woman who in her own mind, and the mind of the public, is both generous and holy. So why then, when she should be walking off with her head held high, does she beggin to beg for pity? Granted Sophocles needed to "cover his tracks" by furthering the image of the subordinate woman, but this is also Antigone's necessary downfall. Rather than turning to people and exclaiming "Do not fear, for the Gods will judge me fairly!" she grovels and ask that they '"look upon me...and pity me"' (225). As if she could not make herself look any weaker, when the people try and illuminate once more that she will be dying '"not without a kind of honor'" she can only '"feel the loneliness of [Niobe's] death in [her own]'" (225). Were it not for this sudden turnabout of broken spirit she could have died a hero.