Hamilton is an English teacher at Gary Academy, an innovative private school in Gary, North Carolina. In this essay, she explores the device of storytelling in Antigone as it is used as a medium for communicating social roles.

Storytelling is a device of narrative drama used to move the plot along, announcing action that takes place offstage, skipping over time, and revealing intrigues. Anouilh makes efficient use of storytelling from the very start, when his chorus-narrator relates the story of Oedipus and his sons, whose deaths brought Creon to the throne. In this case storytelling informs the audience, allowing the action of the play to jump in at the moment of Antigone's act of defiance against Creon's law.

He also uses storytelling as prophecy and warning, inspiration, and persuading. In these cases, storytelling serves to remind the characters and the audience of social roles and the social...