Antigone
Conflict Essay
In the play Antigone, there is a conflict between Creon and Antigone over which law to obey for Antigone is attempting to bury her brother, the law of the state or God’s laws. It is a conflict between a human law and a higher law. Antigone believes in following God’s laws, even if it means breaking the law of the state, a law set by Creon which states that Antigone’s brother Polyneices is not to have a burial and no one is to touch him. Antigone believes that it is God’s law that she should bury him, while Creon believes that no one should breaks the laws of the state.
In the first scene of the play, Antigone makes her case clear that she is going to bury her brother, regardless of the law Creon has set against it. After she tells her sister, Ismene, that she is going to bury their brother, Ismene replies, “The law is strong, we must give in to the law, in this thing and in worse. I beg the dead to forgive me, but I am helpless: I must yield to those in authority.” Antigone replies that she is still going to bury her brother and says to Ismene, “Apparently the laws of the Gods mean nothing to you.” Antigone believes that is her right by the laws of the Gods for her to bury her brother. She believes that the laws of the Gods are higher than the laws of the state and that she is doing right by following the laws of the Gods.
Antigone again makes her case of following Gods laws, this time in the face of Creon. Antigone admits that it was her that dusted the body of her brother. Creon asks her if she had heard his proclamation that the body was not to be touched and Antigone says that she had. Creon asks her, “And yet you dared defy the law?” And Antigone replies,
“I dared, it was not God’s proclamation. That final Justice that rules the world below makes no such laws. Your edict, King was strong, but all your strength is weakness itself against the immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were and shall be, operative forever, beyond man utterly.”
Antigone defied the laws of the state because she believed in the higher law of Gods that she had...