Human LawSophocles famous play, Antigone, can be perceived as a conflict between individual conscience and state policy. Yet the issue of the play goes beyond that conflict and touches the universal conditions of suffering, religion, and loyalty. Through Antigones character--which represents the spheres of family loyalty, divine law, and human suffering, Sophocles conveys the idea that a law of man that violates religious law is not a law at all. He expresses this idea by having Antigone dutifully bury her brothers body although it is against King Kreons ruling. Antigones action is not only an act of family loyalty but is an act of piety demanded by the gods. The play commences with Antigone announcing her decision to bury her dead brother, Polyneices, although Kreon, the King of Thebes, declared that Polyneices body will remain unburied. He said, [...] Polyneices, the exile, [...] will have no ritual, no mourners,/will be left unburied so men may see him/ripped for food by dogs and vultures (Sophocles 237-242). This goes against Greek religion in which if a body is not given proper burial rites, the bodys soul is condemned to torment and will wander aimlessly through space. When Antigone sprinkles dust three times over her brothers dead body, it is equivalent to burial and Polyneices soul can take its place in the realm of Hades (Sophocles 522-3). Antigone defends her actions by saying that man-made laws are not dominant over the laws that the gods made: I didnt suppose your decree had strength enough,/or you, who are human,/to violate the lawful traditions/the gods have not written merely, but made infallible. Antigones actions suggest that divine law in this context is superior over moral law. She tells Kreon that [...] Death is a god/who wants his laws obeyed (Sophocles 634-5). By saying this, Antigone shows that she would rather sacrifice her life to devotion to higher principles that to human law and suffering. Suffering is a ...
