From the Antigone playbill by Forum Theatre Dramaturg Hannah Hessel.
The memory is very clear: me at maybe 15 years old, sitting on my bedroom floor reading Antigone. It was not the Sophocles version I was reading, though I had studied that at school. It was a version of Antigone that spoke directly to me. It pulled me, as an American teenager, into a tragedy that seemed close. I read Jean Anouilh’s adaptation over and over until Antigone’s words were in my head. I was caught.
Antigone was, to my teenage mind, everything I wanted to be. She was smart, quirky, and she got the boy even though she wasn’t the prettiest. And she was strong, so strong that she put her life second to her beliefs. So strong that she would stand and fight, and yet she was human—I could feel her pain. In Simone Fraisse’s book Le Mythe d’Antigone, she is called “the daughter of the Revolution.” Antigone is the ultimate rebel with a cause.
Though Antigone has been performed in different times with various adaptations, it all started in ancient Greece. Sophocles’ Antigone is the last of his trilogy about the fall of Oedipus and his decedents. Antigone’s tragedy starts when her father, Oedipus, attempts to avoid his fate. When he realizes that the prophecy has come true, that he has done the unthinkable and slept with his mother and killed his father, Oedipus blinds himself with his mother’s brooch.
Upon learning that fate is inescapable, Oedipus leaves Thebes to die in solitude with his daughters, Antigone and Ismene. His sons, Eteocles and Polynices, are both given the throne and are supposed to divide the power between them. When Eteocles refuses to give up the throne, Polynices attempts to overthrow him, and the two brothers go to war. They kill each other in battle, and Oedipus’ brother-in-law, Creon, reluctantly takes the throne of Thebes. To preserve his power, Creon orders Polynices to remain unburied as a warning to other rebels and proclaims death to anyone who attempts to give him the traditional burial rites.
Sophocles’ Creon is a heartless leader who is left to be ruined by the fates. Anouilh’s Creon is much more complicated. He is given the job unwillingly but has a keen sense of political responsibility. He does not want to fulfill his proclamation, but he knows he has to maintain order. The moral ambiguity of the play has sparked much debate about Jean Anouilh’s political standing.
First performed in 1944 in Paris, near the end of the Nazi occupation, the play’s two main characters both caused controversy. In such a politically charged city, it is only natural that a play about difficult political situations would cause conflict. Antigone’s recalcitrant nature read to critics on the right as a analogy for the French underground, ready to die for a lost cause. The left took a very different view of the play, seeing Creon as an apologist and occupation sympathizer. One critic at the time called Creon, “the real hero…a slave to his duty who sacrifices everything that is dear to him for the sake of his country.”
Watching the play now, I see Antigone with different eyes. I am now on the path to becoming an adult, aware, as Creon warns, that life is “something hard, something simple.” I now think I am more like Creon, wanting the best but unsure what to do. I no longer see the play in black and white, right and wrong; the layers of the tragedy hit me more acutely now, and I see the gray. For a second, I long for compromise, not for battle. For a second, I hope the Prologue is wrong. Then I hear Antigone say the words I remember so well: “I want everything and I want it now. And I want it to be whole and complete otherwise I’m not interested. I don’t want to be a good little girl who’s happy with what she’s given. Today I want to be a hundred percent sure.” And I am once more envious; Antigone is once again everything I want to be.
Sources:
Sophocles I, Three Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, University of Chicago Press, 1998
Jean Anouilh, Antigone, trans. Barbara Bray, Methuen Drama Student Editions, 2005
