Antigone's Closing Argument
| Author | Roger S. Fisher |
| Pages | 83-111 |
•(
FIVE
>
Antigone
’
s
Closing
Argument
AT
THE
END
of
the
Prologue,
Antigone
vowed
not
to
suffer
anything
so
awful
as
not
to
die
well.
A
character
who
makes
a
vow
like
this
in
a
Greek
tragedy
is
likely
to
end
up
regretting
it,
and
in
the
end
Antigone
will
die
an
awful
death.
But
while
Antigone
’
s
sentiment
is
clear,
her
lan
guage
is
not.
Her
manner
of
expression
is
inelegant
and
shows
her
to
be
an
inexperienced
litigant.
The
Prologue
began
with
Antigone
trying
to
convince
Ismene
to
join
her
in
burying
their
brother.
But
if
she
cannot
convince
her
own
sister
to
bury
their
brother,
then
who
can
she
convince
to
go
along
with
her?
By
the
end
of
her
role
in
the
play,
when
Antigone
makes
her
closing
argument,
she
has
undergone
a
complete
and
sudden
reversal
(with
parallels
to
other
tragedies
where
there
is
a
“
narrative
turn
”
or
moment
of
complete
surrender
when
a
character
suddenly
submits
to
another).'
Athenian
trials
were,
above
all,
exercises
in
rhetoric
rather
than
exercises
in
jurisprudence,
in
which
appeals
to
emotion
and
passion
took
precedence
over
logic,
and
this
makes
ideal
material
for
a
drama.
Legal
dis
course
analysis
offers
new
insights
into
a
controversial
passage
in
the
play
that
has
often
been
dismissed
as
inauthentic
(that
is,
inserted
by
someone
after
Sophocles
wrote
the
play)
or
simply
baffling
and
relatively
unimport
ant
(that
is,
inconsistent
with
how
Antigone
is
supposed
to
speak).
This
is
the
passage
at
lines
945-55
where
Antigone
gives
her
legalistic
defence
and
rests
her
case
with
a
final
impassioned
speech
to
the
jury
of
Theban
elders
(and
the
audience
watching
the
play).
Antigone
’
s
argument
marks
a
shift
[83]
Antigone
v.
Creon
from
the
discourse
of
religious
law
to
the
discourse
of
man-made
law.
She
resorts
to
the
tools
of
trial
advocacy
that
were
familiar
to
the
Athenian
audience
and
to
their
notion
of
fairness
or
equity
under
the
law.
In
her
closing
argument,
Antigone
makes
an
improbable
argument.
If
Polyneices
were
her
husband
or
a
child
rather
than
her
brother,
she
would
not
have
fulfilled
the
burial
rites
that
she
had
insisted
until
that
point
in
the
play
were
a
mandatory
obligation
for
all:
I
tell
you
I
would
never,
if
I
were
a
mother
of
children,
nor
if
my
dead
husbands
corpse
were
melting
away,
have
chosen
this
sentence
against
the
will
of
the
citizens.
For
the
sake
of
what
law
do
I
say
these
things
?
If
my
husband
had
died,
there
would
have
been
another,
and
a
child
from
another
husband
if
I
lost
it.
But,
with
my
mother
and
father
both
hidden
in
the
House
of
Hades,
there
is
no
other
brother
of
mine
who
might
see
the
light.
With
such
a
law
in
mind
did
I
honour
you
above
all,
but
Creon
thinks
I
have
done
wrong
in
these
matters
and
dared
terrible
things,
oh
dear
brother.
(LINES
945-55)
The
passage
poses
many
difficulties
for
interpretations
of
Antigone
as
a
moral
exemplar.
Why
does
she
seem
to
shift
at
the
last
moment
from
a
“
natural
law
”
rule
of
general
application
that
dead
bodies
must
be
bur
ied
in
accordance
with
the
religious
ritual
(the
argument
of
the
“
moral
”
Antigone)
to
an
improbable
argument
for
a
narrow
exception
for
an
im
mediate
family
member
such
as
Polyneices
(the
argument
of
the
“
flawed
”
Antigone)?
Despite
modern
attempts
to
explain
away
these
lines,
an
an
cient
audience
might
have
recalled
that
one
of
Clytemnestra
’
s
most
shock
ing
crimes
was
not
that
she
killed
her
husband
Agamemnon
but
that
she
failed
to
close
his
eyes
and
to
bury
him
properly
as
a
wife
should.
Aga
memnon
himself
indicts
his
wife
for
this
offence
when
he
meets
Odys
seus
in
the
Underworld.
An
Athenian
audience
schooled
in
Homer
and
familiar
with
Aeschylus
’
s
Oresteia
trilogy
might
well
have
been
shocked
at
Antigone
’
s
statement
that
she
would
not
bury
a
husband
or
even
her
own
child
in
the
same
circumstances.
And
yet
Antigone
is
claiming
not
only
that
she
would
not
bury
a
husband
in
the
same
circumstances
but
[84]
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