Antigone recap

After Oedipus's sons Eteocles and Polyneices kill each other fighting over Thebes, the new king Creon honours Eteocles but forbids burial of Polyneices as a traitor. Their sister Antigone believes divine and family duties require burial and performs the rites despite the threat of death. Creon refuses appeals from Antigone, Ismene, the Theban elders, and his son Haemon, who is pledged to marry her. He orders Antigone sealed in a rocky chamber. The prophet Tiresias then warns that the gods reject Thebes' sacrifices because Creon has left a corpse exposed and entombed a living person. Creon finally reverses course, buries Polyneices, and goes to free Antigone, but she has killed herself. Haemon dies beside her, and his mother Eurydice kills herself after hearing the news. Creon survives to recognize that his rigidity destroyed his family, while the Chorus identifies humility and respect for divine law as the wisdom purchased by his suffering.

Thebes has survived an attack led by Polyneices, one of the sons of Oedipus. Polyneices and his brother Eteocles have killed each other, leaving their uncle Creon to rule. Antigone secretly tells her sister Ismene that Creon has ordered Eteocles buried with honour but forbidden anyone to bury Polyneices. For Antigone, the command conflicts with obligations owed to the dead and to the gods. She asks Ismene to help cover their brother's body. Ismene is afraid of the death penalty and argues that the surviving sisters have too little power to challenge the state. Antigone rejects caution, declares that she will perform the burial herself, and leaves Ismene distressed but unable to stop her.

The Chorus of Theban elders celebrates the city's escape from conquest. Creon addresses them as the new king and defines loyalty to the city as the basis of good rule. He announces that Eteocles will receive full honours while Polyneices must remain exposed, guarded against anyone attempting burial. A frightened sentry then reports that someone has scattered dust over Polyneices and carried out the minimum funeral observance without leaving a clear trace. Creon suspects bribery and conspiracy rather than religious duty. He threatens the guards unless they find the offender, turning the unexplained rite into a direct test of his authority.

The guards clear the dust and keep watch. When Antigone returns and repeats the rites, they arrest her and bring her before Creon. She admits the act without hesitation and argues that his proclamation cannot cancel older divine laws governing the dead. Creon regards her defiance, and especially her refusal to submit after being caught, as intolerable. Ismene tries to share responsibility, but Antigone will not let her claim a deed she declined to perform. Creon condemns Antigone despite her engagement to his son. Haemon approaches respectfully and urges his father to listen to the citizens, who pity Antigone, and to remain flexible. Creon interprets disagreement as disobedience. Their argument ends with Haemon leaving in anger and Creon resolved to confine Antigone alive in a stone chamber.

Antigone is led away to the chamber where she will be sealed with only a small provision of food. She mourns the marriage and ordinary life she will never have, while still holding to the duty that brought her sentence. Creon refuses to accept responsibility for her coming death because the confinement leaves her fate formally to the gods. Tiresias arrives with evidence that the city's religious rites are failing: birds and sacrificial signs have been polluted by remains taken from Polyneices' unburied body. He warns that Creon has reversed the proper order by keeping a dead man above ground and placing a living woman below it. Creon first accuses the prophet of corruption, but Tiresias predicts deaths within Creon's own household. After the prophet leaves, the shaken Chorus persuades the king to undo his commands.

Creon finally arranges burial for Polyneices and then hurries to release Antigone, but his change of mind is too late. At the chamber, Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon is beside her; after attempting to strike Creon, he turns his weapon on himself and dies holding Antigone. A messenger brings the news to Eurydice. She listens quietly, enters the palace, and kills herself, blaming Creon for the loss of her sons. Creon returns carrying Haemon's body and is told of his wife's death. The king who treated compromise as weakness is left alive without his family, acknowledging that his own decisions caused the disaster. He asks his attendants to take him away. The Chorus concludes that pride and irreverence bring severe punishment and that wisdom often arrives only through suffering.

Tiresias warns that Creon's treatment of Polyneices and Antigone has offended the gods. Creon finally yields and goes first to bury Polyneices, then to release Antigone from the stone chamber. The reversal comes too late. Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon, grieving beside her, attacks his father unsuccessfully and then kills himself. When Eurydice hears that her son is dead, she withdraws into the palace and takes her own life, condemning Creon for the deaths of their children. Creon returns carrying Haemon's body and learns of his wife's death. Having lost his family through the decree he defended as necessary to the state, he recognizes his own responsibility and asks to be led away. The Chorus closes by linking wisdom with reverence for divine law and by presenting suffering as the punishment that teaches the proud.