When the destruction of the future by those in power sacrifices their children to the blind self-interest of adults.
Violating her uncle Creon’s capital crime decree, Antigone honors reverence to the gods by providing a burial for her brother Polyneices, who died in mortal combat with his brother over the loss of shared kingship of Thebes. The two brothers killed each other in combat. Her uncle Creon decreed that Polyneices be left unburied — the traditional penalty for rebellion — on pain of death for anyone violating his decree.
Antigone by Sophocles shows the violations of the Oedipus epic’s stark imperative — reverence for the higher orders under which all live.
Sophocles’ plays show characters managing religious, political, cultural, familial, and individual forces around them, working through recognizably psychological positions strikingly similar to analytical psychology’s approach to emotional development.
Dr. Woodruff engages people in plays by inviting participants to join in dramatic readings, so they can feel what it’s like to be in Creon’s position or Antigone’s.
