Conflict In Antigone.

There is no conflict within Antigone. Or, at least, the dramatic conflict of the play is only ever born out of attempts at peace. An early review of Anouilh's adaptation stated that 'the play's lack of action made it dull and long-winded.' While this appears deep criticism, I argue that it is through this lack of action, and lack of conflict, that the drama of the play is born. In this essay I will discuss the role of peace, particularly in regards to the characters Antigone and Creon and their moral motives for seeking an end to conflict. I will also examine the external conflicts that the play highlights, depending on its context of performance. I will discuss how it is the lack of dramatic conflict, but instead the internal conflict of the characters, and the external conflicts of a particular performance context, that brings Antigone's true drama to life.

While George Steiner argues that the play is centred on five binaries - 'man/woman; gods/humanity; society/the individual; youth/age; the living/the dead' - I believe that it is through the attempt to unite these social oppositions that the plot of the play is propelled. This is particularly clear in the role between man and woman. Steiner draws a parallel between 'womb' and 'tomb,' suggesting that Antigone's role as a woman is to bring peace in a time of conflict. However, a woman's role is traditionally within a private sphere of her family and home, and it is despite her role as woman Antigone chooses to act in the public sphere. She forces the private issue of the burial of her brother to become an external social question. This is not performing within her sex, but instead mirroring the male sexuality, and therefore aligning with Creon. While Creon claims, 'I must be no man at all,' suggesting that for Antigone to become man, he must become woman, I believe he does not sacrifice his male status, as Antigone sacrifices her female, but instead they become equals. Steiner's gender binary roles are lost and Antigone and Creon are united, rather than opposed, in terms of the power of their actions. Steiner further claims that 'if women behave as they should 'by nature' then they are incapable of virtue.' However, I believe that it is not an act of criminality, but an act of peace, in which Antigone sacrifices her female role. She professes, 'If I die before my time, I count that as / My profit' evidencing her motive is to service others, despite the consequences it has upon her own fate. This is an act that has been seen throughout history - 'between 1939 and 1945, 269 women were executed for crimes against the state' after burying their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers as an act of peace. The mirroring of this real life event in Antigone's actions demonstrate that she is not a character conflicting with the authority of Creon, but instead one defeating the internal conflict of whether to overthrow her domestic duty as a woman, for the greater duty of bringing peace to the dead.

Where Antigone resigns her role as woman, Creon resigns his role as Antigone's relative and Haemon's father for the greater moral need of his role as King of Thebes. Richard Amacher argues that Creon is the real protagonist of the play. It is true that while Antigone's fate is 'decided almost immediately,' Creon's fate is 'prolonged.' It is also true that he is not the classic representation of 'villain' to Antigone's 'heroin' role, but instead he is a three dimensional character, whose mind is changeable. However, I would argue that instead of the protagonist, he is a moral villain, tied to his fate and role within the play, and within society, as much as Antigone is tied to hers. Ultimately, it is through Creon's failure to act that his own devastating fate is determined. He is his own villain. It is not through outward conflict, but instead an internal one that leads to lack of dramatic action and interception, resulting in devastation. Antigone beseeches Creon: 'be like me, do what you have to do.' However, through his lack of action he is as culpable as if he had ordered Antigone's death. In Anouilh's text Creon states, 'I'm going to spend however long it takes to save you, you little pest.' This line is a paradox: clearly intended to be performed with anger, and apparent conflict, its subtext shows love and desire to protect his young relative. As King, he has the power to take life, but he does not have the power to give it, or to prevent it being taken. He cannot deter Antigone's fate, and therefore we see the conflict of power verses powerlessness, internally within one character. We see a King, powerless: unable to act. When Creon vows to save Antigone she undermines him in her reply: 'You're the King - you can do anything. But not that.'

Creon's motives support Steven Wagner claim that there is 'no real moral conflict' within Antigone. The concept of morals, and who is morally accountable for the fates of the characters, is an important question in the play. I agree with Wagner's theory, but would take it a step further in suggesting that there is moral conflict, but not in so much as moral verses immoral, but rather the conflict of moral verses moral. No character is wrongly motivated: their morals just hold different priorities that act against each other. Creon wishes Antigone not to act, so that he does not have to either. Antigone wishes to bury her brother to bring peace to him in death, and to Thebes, no matter what the consequence. Ismene, Haemon and Eurydice wish for peace, resolution and happy marriage, all of which they are denied by the actions of other characters within play. Antigone states: 'my nature's not to join in hate, but to join in love.' However, this 'love' is different from the love which her fiancé Heamon and sister Ismene seek from her, or the love Creon wishes to give to her through saving her life. All characters wish for love and peace, but of different sorts, and here the conflict lies. There is not a binary right and wrong, as Steiner might suggest. Only, there is the conflict of multiple moral grounds. Where Antigone has sacrificed moral domestic sphere in the context of her home, to the context of the city, so too must Creon sacrifice his duty as an Uncle to his duty as a leader, for his responsibility as King. Where Haemon wishes for a happy marriage and to be a devoted husband, he must sacrifice his domestic life in order to fulfil this moral duty of love in suicide. Ismene, the only surviving character in Sophocles' version of the text, is bound to life, to living, no matter how lonely and miserable, due to her moral duty as a woman (as highlighted in my first paragraph). She is the final symbol of peace and hope after the play's conflict has ended. These examples clearly demonstrate that it is the roles, rather than characters, that are conflicting. It is the social systems that are in place that work against the characters, rather than the characters working against each other. Antigone, in Sophocles' text, states: 'these laws live not now or yesterday / But always.' It is because of this that the play Antigone is so universally performed. The dramatic conflicts it highlights are not within the play, but instead are external ones. For example, Kimberly Cowell-Meyers uses the play Antigone as a 'motivating text' to teach students about politics. She states that 'it can help us consider the distinction between power and legitimacy, between leadership and self-importance, and between power and justice.' When Creon declares 'grand ideas are not allowed in someone who's the slave / of others' he highlights the powerlessness of mankind, and the lack of right to oppose and conflict the state, as is seen in many political societies across the world. It is argued that 'the play's relevance is. instinctively felt by its audience' and audiences around the world, and throughout the performance history of the play, will project their own contexts on to the text. As well as the audiences, translators, directors and performers will use external conflict when deciding where to set the play. Translations and adaptations of the text have been used the world over, very often in times of political crises. It has been performed in the context of the conflicts in Ireland ; Africanised into two well-known productions - Athol Fugard's 'The Island' and Femi Osofisan's 'Teyonni, An African Antigone.' A performance of the play in 2001 in Edinburgh was set in the conflict in Georgia. One critic wrote, 'the family relationship between Antigone and Creon [is] an overwhelming metaphor [for] old reformers, and those appalled by the brutality of power.' It is not the dramatic conflict on the stage, but rather, 'the wings of the social stage,' the external conflict and the context of a production, that is most relevant to the dramatizing of this Greek tragedy. And it just this, the play's tragedy, that unites the plot with each context within which it is played.

To conclude, the theme of conflict in Antigone is dramatized through the context of its production. It is the conflict in the wings - the conflict of the world outside the play - that gives the play its full dramatic significance. As well as the external conflicts, it also the internal ones that are highlighted through the motives of the character, that give the play true drama: Antigone's sacrifice of her own life; Creon's conflict of his duty to his state, against the duty to his family; Haemen, Ismene and Eurydice powerlessness over their own fates. In both the external and internal conflicts of the play, we see that the villain of the piece is the political system within which we live. The conflicts with each other are only ever symptomatic of this greater conflict with societal systems, and the structural nature of dramatic theatre - the physical space and time of a play - structurally mirrors this theory through its form. Every character is united, rather than conflicted, in their desire for a different path - an alternative fate. It is not the characters, but the systems within which the characters are living, that are to blame for the consequences of each characters outcome. This is how it is able to be played time and time again, with the external conflicts informing the viewing experience of its audiences, making it a new play to every generation.