Integrity in Antigone by Jean AnouilhThe distinctions between young and old, naive and wise are very clear. There is a fiery passion for life often ingrained in the young, and a sense of bittersweet reflection in the elderly. The age gap between the two is often a source of conflict. Young people want to hurry and live only to end up dying; Old people want to slow down their pace of life and delay death. In such divergent circumstances, conflicts are almost impossible to avoid. The question of how to grow old while retaining the idealism and integrity of youth seems to be the source of most conflict. Jean Anouilh, in his version of the classic Greek play Antigone, firmly captures and reflects the disparity between the old and the young through the use of the characters Antigone and Creon. The play opens, after the chorus's introduction, with Antigone rushing out of a night that the audience can only view as a night of living life fully. She describes her nighttime adventures in detail, enthusiastically proclaiming that she had enjoyed the world as it was untouched before morning. “The whole world was breathless, waiting,” she tells the nurse (7). She evades the questions asked of her by the nurse, and it becomes obvious to the audience that she did something she should not have done. This in itself immediately presents Antigone as a girl who wants to live at all costs. It seems that living, for her, means breaking the rules and seeking out danger. When Ismene, Antigone's sister, enters the room, the audience receives the explanation of Antigone's breathless nocturnal escapades. The nurse comes out, allowing the girls to talk, and Ismene begins to talk about the possibility of a death sentence for both of them. Creon, the king and their uncle, issued an edict to the people of Thebes that the rebel Polyneices, brother of Ismene and Antigone, should not be buried under pain of death. Antigone explains in what appears to be a rational tone that she and Ismene are required, as if by duty, to bury Polyneices and face execution. She makes Ismène understand that there are no two solutions. “That’s how it is. What do you think we can do to change this? she said (11). She also tells Ismene that she does not want to die, but it seems contrary to the audience throughout the progression of the play..