Civil Disobedience In Sophocles Antigone

When writing about why civil disobedience is necessary, Henry David Thoreau said, “The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it” (On the Duty, 437). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, civil disobedience is defined as the “refusal to obey the laws, commands, etc., of a government or authority as part of an organized, non-violent political protest or campaign” (OED). In Sophocles’s Antigone, Antigone herself chooses to use a form of civil disobedience to give burial rites to her fallen brother. Three binary oppositions will be used in this essay, those oppositions being women v. men in religion, divine

For the purpose of this paper I will define divine law in my own terms: divine law is the set of ideals or beliefs, either put forth in religious texts or passed down through oral tradition, about god-like beings. Throughout Antigone it becomes increasingly clear that Antigone feels as though she must follow the will of the gods, this will being that each individual must be given proper burial rites. When Antigone was finally caught for her crime she declares to Creon that “It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, / who made this proclamation—not to me. / Nor did I think your edict had such force / that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, / the great unwritten, unshakeable traditions.” (Sophocles 82). This open refusal Antigone proclaims in front of Creon and his followers shows a deep rooted belief she holds about divine law being more pertinent than human

In response to Ismene saying she won’t help bury her brother Antigone states “If you say so, you will make me hate you, / and the hatred of the dead, by all rights, / will haunt you night and day. / But leave me to my own absurdity, leave me / to suffer this—dreadful thing. I will suffer / nothing as great as death without glory.” (Sophocles 64). Ismene is the last family Antigone has left and the last person she can count on and due to her rejection Antigone becomes “the other”, her views are not shared by anyone around her and she is completely alone in her endeavor to give burial rites to her brother. Ismene chooses to stay “the citizen”, someone who blindly follows the orders of “the state”, while Antigone made the choice to become “the other”. Antigone made that choice based on her beliefs about burial and divine law but Ismene just did what would protect her from the wrath of “the