Challenging Authority

The play’s action, its plot or narrative line, is driven by this central thematic impulse. This is the issue at the core of the debate between protagonist Antigone, who essentially argues that authority should be challenged when the human condition demands it, and antagonist Creon, who represents and embodies absolute authority and who argues against challenges such as those made by the more humane Antigone. It’s important to note, however, that the debate between the two has somewhat different individual significance. For Antigone, the issue is very personal, in that her positions are defined by the particular question of what is to happen to the body of her brother, “authority” having decreed that the body is to be left unburied. Her arguments are therefore so issue specific that it is difficult to know whether she advocates challenging authority in general, or whether she is simply...