The Power Of Love In Antigone

The Power of Love
In the play Antigone, there are negative and positive qualities each character possesses such as: determination, willfulness, deceit, greed for power, freewill, and fate. Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone, and Ismene all grew up in harmony and peace. Until their father, Oedipus, realizes that he had fulfilled a prophecy that his parents were trying so desperately to avoid. Oedipus who was abandoned by his parents as a child fulfilled the prophecy by unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother, Jocasta, the queen. Everything in their life had been turned upside down. After Jocasta realized she married her son she hung herself and Oedipus stabs his eyes out. Oedipus goes into exile and leaves his sons to join together
Antigone’s determination to bury her brother Polynices against the King rule leads to her, and many of her loved ones unfortunate death and despair. Creon, the King now, said that no one was allowed to bury Polynices and give him honor the way he gave his brother, Eteocles, honor in fighting for Thebes. Polynices was a traitor to Creon and did not get Creon’s respect. Therefore, Polynices was laid out, still bloody from war, so the animals can feast on his rotting flesh. This baffled Antigone and led her to disobey Creon’s orders. She felt that the law made by man was okay to defy because it wasn’t a law set forth by the gods. In the play, Antigone shows her affection for her brother and how she would do anything to honor his life, even if it meant her death, “I will bury him myself. And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I will lie with the one I love and love by him--” (Sophocles 1106). Antigone sneaks out and gives her brother a proper burial. Once Creon finds out that Antigone went against his edict he locks her up in a dark, musky cell. Not long after Antigone commits suicide by hanging herself. After Haemon, Creon’s son, hears about his fiancés, Antigones, death he kills