What are Antigone’s reasons for performing funeral rites on her brother’scorpse in direct violation of Creon’s edict?

What will be an ideal response?



  • Why is it so important to Antigone that the body of Polyneices be given a proper burial? Quite simply, because she loved her brother and because she feels that a proper burial is reverence that the living owe to all the dead. “I shall be / a criminal —but a religious one” is her comment to Ismene (see lines 84–85), and she elaborates on this theme in the following exchange with Creon:



Antigone: There is nothing shameful in honoring my brother.
Creon: Was not he that died on the other side your brother?
Antigone: Yes, indeed, of my own blood from father and mother.
Creon: Why then do you show a grace that must be impious in his sight?
Antigone: That other dead man would never bear you witness in what you say.
Creon: Yes he would, if you put him only on equality with one that was a desecrator.
Antigone: It was his brother, not his slave, that died.
Creon: He died destroying the country the other defended.
Antigone: The god of death demands these rites for both.
Creon: But the good man does not seek an equal share only, with the bad.
Antigone: Who knows
if in that other world this is true piety?
Creon: My enemy is still my enemy, even in death.
Antigone: My nature is to join in love, not hate. (lines 559–575)

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