Civil Disobedience In Sophocles Antigone

Sophocles's play “Antigone” has resonated throughout history for its inspiration of civil disobedience. As the heroine, Antigone, claims that the king’s laws, Creon’s, are not the same as god’s law, it sets up a contrast between the laws of god and the laws of man. Through the work of tragedies, a culture of people form and integrate themselves within the political education: learning about tragedies and how to prevent them from occurring.
Imagine if the President of the United States’s brother raised an army, fought a gruesome war with the United States, and is declared a traitor, as what similarly happened with Polynices. If this play was set in a democracy where the people vote by majority rule to ban the burial of this traitor Polynices, would Antigone’s actions, still conflicting with the laws of the state, be just or would the majority decision be just? Antigone confesses her actions, admitting that she violated the law enacted by a legitimate authority. She had acted in direct violation of this law, would not have done it in secret, and was willing to accept the consequences. She does not question the legitimacy of Creon, but the rather the legitimacy of his law. Antigone says this “law was not made of Zeus” who is the highest god of Olympus, and the king of the pantheon. As this law was not created by Zeus, it is not eternal and can …show more content…
No matter how well-intended the public envisions a law to be, there are some rights that cannot be intruded upon, whether it is free exercise of religion or some right to behave in privacy that cannot be regulated by the public no matter the outcome. It is in our own language of right, which can mean either to do the most lawful action or one’s inalienable human right can come into the conflict of