One of the key thematic threads running through the plays of the Oedipus cycle is the debate over the primary importance between the laws of the gods here. of the state. For example, in both Oedipus Rex and Antigone, the eponymous characters are torn between serving the Theban body politic and heeding the moral imperatives inherent in the prophecies of Destiny. In both plays, judgment falls on the side of the gods, whose laws must prevail over those of man-made “politics” (The Oedipus Cycle, 204). For both Oedipus and Antigone, their tragic heroism, the way in which they prove themselves “better in degree” compared to their peers, stems from their ultimate sacrifice to honor the will of the gods and repair the state. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay However, within this dramatic setting, there are fundamental differences between father and daughter that show that Antigone is not not the chosen figure of the “sacred monster” embodied by Oedipus, and rather a model of intelligence and reason in the service of the common good. It is through her free will, through her moral choices, that she paradoxically accomplishes the will of the gods and protects the common good, without being a simple passive observer of their prophecies. Furthermore, because her decisions dramatize the potentially conflicting relationship between the laws of the gods and those of the state, Antigone demonstrates how tragedy and unrest arise as a result of this discord. By once again honoring its capacities for intelligence and reason, it proposes the idea of ​​“conscience” as a possible solution, as a means of instigating change within the State and of bringing these two systems together. Although the “heroic journeys” taken by Oedipus and Antigone lead them to similar ends and are both guided by a common truth, their particular origins are significantly different. In Oedipus the King, Oedipus denies at every moment the preeminence of Destiny. For example, Teiresias is well known in Thebes as an agent of the gods, as a “sighted lord of the lord Apollo” (15), a “seer” (blind) able to speak on his behalf. Despite this consensual opinion, reinforced by the Choragos, Oedipus is certain that the prophecies delivered by Teiresias are false. He questions their validity by disparagingly calling Tiresias a “decrepit fortune teller,” a “fraudster,” and a debtor of “mystical mummies” (21). He also questions the integrity of Tiresias' character and purpose, accusing him of "infamy" (20) and of conspiring with Creon in a plot against the king. Refusing to accept Teiresias's announcement that he is the “pollution” (19) causing the plague in Thebes, Oedipus insists on the sanctity of the state, represented by the defense of his position as king. He maintains, for example, that he is the rightful protector of the city-state, his unique (puzzle-solving) abilities having initially saved the people from the Sphinx's curse. It is only when all the details of his miserable story are revealed, and after carrying out various investigations which belie his fundamental doubt, that Oedipus is convinced of the supremacy and truth of the gods and of the inevitability of his fate: “It was true!” All the prophecies... I, Oedipus... damned in his birth, in his marriage, damned/damned in the blood he shed with his own hand! » (64) Oedipus thus represents a kind of "sacred monster" -- a virtuous King who nevertheless committed a crime so vile that he broke the natural order, he is therefore a figure chosen by the gods to fulfill the function divine/inhuman to restore this broken balance and, by itsown tragic end, teaching the pre-eminence of Destiny. In contrast, Antigone upholds the will of the gods (and protects the common good) not because it is the subject of a prophecy, nor as the forced result of an unequivocal revelation. Instead, she actively seeks the will of the gods through her particular moral choices, through her intelligence and ability to reason. Unlike her father, Antigone embraces the primacy of the gods, manifested in her moral imperatives, over the codes of the state from the beginning of her dramatic episode. Although both plays are set against the backdrop of a troubled or unstable city-state (Thebes), the plague that strikes the opening of Oedipus Rex is the result of a profound crime committed against nature: the murder of his own father and marriage. (sexual consummation) with her mother - whereas in Antigone the inciting dilemma is that of cultural practice - the burial of the dead - and how its implicit ethical questions dramatize the larger theoretical debate at the center of the cycle of Oedipus. In this play, Antigone's brothers, Polyneices and Eteocles, were both killed in the aftermath of the war. However, because Polyneices committed two acts of treason, both in violation of the terms of his exile and while fighting on the side of Thebes, the newly ascended King Creon ordered his proper burial denied: Polyneices, dis- I, must not have a grave. : no man shall touch him or say the least prayer for him… This is my command, and you can see the wisdom behind it. As long as I am king, no traitor will be honored. But whoever shows… that he is on the side of the State, he will have my respect. (197) Creon here asserts the rightness of his decision, alluding to the "obvious wisdom behind it" and describing those who oppose or question his rules as "traitors" who will not be tolerated ( or “honored”). . Thus, as evidenced by this quote, Creon justifies the power, strength and legitimacy of his “command” by associating it with the good of the state. He aligns his decree – and himself as king – with serving the interests of the “public good” (197). Antigone, however, upholds a different kind of mandate—one, in fact, that is more specifically and deeply concerned with the needs of the common good: the mandate of fundamental moral justice, inherent in the decree of the gods. She disagrees with Creon's self-proclaimed "wise" command and considers it both her duty as a sister and a fellow man to give her beloved brother a proper religious burial. She expresses her point of view with a sort of resolute tenacity which is reminiscent of the proud denial of Oedipus (according to the Choragos, “Like father, like daughter… both stubborn” [209]). With her sister, for example, Antigone adopts a tone of determination that borders on insensitivity. When Ismene refuses to join, and therefore support, Antigone's decision to bury Polyneices, Antigone says: "Go away, Ismene:/I will soon hate you, and the dead too,/For your words are odious” (193). Likewise, she criticizes her sister for siding so vehemently with the state. Ismene is convinced that she and Antigone are powerless against Creon's rule and advocates submission: "We are only women/We cannot fight with men...we must yield to the law" (191-192). In response, Antigone not only reinforces the strength of her conviction, but correlates the notion of moral good with the wish of the gods: “You (Ismene) do what you want/Since apparently the laws of the gods mean nothing /for you” (192). She reiterates this point by defending her actions, her violation of the “burial” mandate, before Creon. Antigone argues that Creon's laws are weak because theyare provisional, the product of a human temporality, of a “now” (208) which is nothing compared to the meaning and legitimacy of “the immortal and unrecorded laws of God… operating forever, beyond beyond man completely. » (208). She therefore disobeys Creon's decree because it gives him no valid and lasting sense of authority: “It was not God's proclamation. This final Justice/She who governs the world below makes no such laws” (208). Antigone therefore inevitably fails to recognize the supremacy of the gods, after the complete disclosure or the revelation of an individual destiny. Unlike Oedipus, his tragic heroism is not due to his status as a passive subject of the prophecy. Rather, his decision to comply with the will of the gods and his death (a suicide by hanging, which in itself demonstrates some kind of action) are the result of a self-guided choice informed by a value system and capacity for action . reason and intelligence. This important distinction is also reflected in the precise way in which Oedipus and Antigone's acceptance of gods and tragic endings repairs the state, providing on the one hand a simple purification and on the other a real overthrow within the ruling body . Identified as the person responsible for the contagion of the plague in Thebes, and fully convinced of his (involuntary) guilt, King Oedipus immediately understands the necessary and healing goodness of his exile. Specifically, at the end of Oedipus the King, he asks Creon: “Let me go… Let me purge my father's Thebes of the pollution/Of my life here” (77). Oedipus thus represents the “scapegoat” of ancient religious rituals. A good and well-intentioned king, he embodies the “best” of the community, a model of man, whose ultimate sacrifice would restore the disturbed order of the city-state. Therefore, by simply fulfilling a prophecy, an act that was predetermined and therefore completely outside of his realms of choice, action, and self-determination, Oedipus purifies an afflicted Thebes. On the other hand, Antigone's disappearance repairs the State through a deeper corrective change, moving further away from the powerless and "sacred monster" figure embodied by her father, and reinforcing her "tragic heroic" figure as shaped by the powers of man. intelligence and reason. Compared to Oedipus' exile, Antigone's punishment and eventual death serves the common good by correcting the state, instigating a readjustment within the political establishment that is attributed not to irresistible will of the gods (prophecy), but to the reasoned decisions of power. citizens (who, if correct, will ultimately reflect the will of the gods). Specifically, in Antigone, Creon turns away from his initial position of privileging the sanctity of the state (and thus the authority of himself) and recognizing the supremacy of the gods. As already mentioned, King Creon is a staunch defender of the laws of the state, sentencing Antigone to imprisonment in a cave as punishment for her refusal to obey these mandates. Throughout the play, he asserts his defense of the State in the face of challenges from within. For example, his son Haimon, husband of Antigone, questions his father's decision and criticizes the king's general narrow-mindedness, unequivocal character, and lack of humility/flexibility. He said to his father: “Yet there are other men/Who can reason too: and their opinions might be useful,/You are not able to know everything/What people say or do, or what that they feel:/…everyone will only tell you what you want to hear” (218). Haimon would like his father to be more “changeable” (219), to allow himself to be “moved” and “to learn from those who can teach” (219). However, Creon is firm inhis choice, insisting that “the State is king” (221) and that all its will automatically protects the public interest. Ironically, Creon sometimes undermines community in the name of his individualism. For example, he asks his son, with some disbelief and disdain, if the City could ever truly “offer to teach him how to govern?” (220) Therefore, he claims to celebrate “the public interest” while simultaneously and contradictorily defending his sole authority as king. Despite his firm point of view, Creon, resolute and smug, eventually changes his mind. He ends up believing Tiresias, whose prophecies of "calamity" (231) and misfortune he initially denies, like Oedipus (in fact, he calls Tiresias a "spoilt fortune teller" (232), which recalls the Oedipus' disparaging remark about the “decrepit fortune teller” [21]). He returns to his statement about Antigone, admitting that Teiresias' words "disturbed" him (235) and asserting that indeed, "the laws of the gods are powerful, and a man must serve them" (236). However, he soon realizes that his overthrow has come too late, for, upon opening the door to Antigone's cave, he discovers her hanged (by her own hand) and her son Haimon also dead, having committed suicide in response to his suicide. With the death also of his wife Eurydice, Creon cannot help but consider this series of murders and family tragedies (which also resembles the downward trajectory of Oedipus' family line) as proof, finally, of the preeminence of Destiny on mandates. state control. At the end of Antigone, much like the enlightened but sad and miserable character of Oedipus at the beginning of his exile, Creon is sadly aware of his own folly as king. He said to the Choragos: “Take me away… I seek comfort; my comfort lies here, dead./All that my hands have touched has become/nothing/Fate has reduced all my pride to a thought of dust” (245). Therefore, both the technical recall of Antigone's phrase, as well as the awareness and change in attitude that Creon experiences, prove how Antigone's disappearance induces a more powerful and powerful restorative effect within of Thebes. As a product of her human choice, a matter of her own determination, Antigone's death, rather than simply fulfilling a "prophecy of purification," actively corrects a fault within the state. This decision certainly distances Antigone even further from the passive, even unhappy figure of the “sacred monster” symbolizing the tragic heroism of Oedipus. Additionally, however, by highlighting, and then readjusting, a flaw within the ruling body, Antigone's "change" highlights the conflicting tension between the laws of the gods and those of the state. It illustrates the negative consequences that emerge from this dual relationship and suggests the idea of ​​the “conscience” of citizens as a possible means of bringing together or reconciling these two systems of rights. The very fact that Creon "turns", that he moves from one end of the spectrum of personal opinions to the other, testifies to the serious disparity and gap between the moral imperatives of the gods and the political codes of the 'State. Throughout the Oedipus Cycle, tragedy results from main characters attempting to fight one set of laws, adopt the other, and challenge nonbelievers (anarchists) on both sides. Is one “side” ultimately better, more correct than the other? According to the first Ode of the Chorus of Antigone, the laws of the gods – and therefore the good of the whole – must be respected above all else. However, this Ode does not reject, but rather exalts the capabilities of man. According to the Choir: O clear intelligence, strength beyond measure! O destiny of man, who accomplishes good and evil! When the laws.