Quote 7
ANTIGONE
Would'st thou do more than slay thy prisoner?
CREON
Not I, thy life is mine, and that's enough.
ANTIGONE
Why dally then? To me no word of thine
Is pleasant: God forbid it e'er should please;
Nor am I more acceptable to thee.
And yet how otherwise had I achieved
A name so glorious as by burying
A brother? so my townsmen all would say,
Where they not gagged by terror, Manifold
A king's prerogatives, and not the least
That all his acts and all his words are law. (497-506)
Antigone’s approach to death is not as fearless as she claims; unable to live in a world where divine law crumbles under human law, she finds death to be the only option left to her.
Quote 8
ANTIGONE
(Str. 1)
Friends, countrymen, my last farewell I make;
My journey's done.
One last fond, lingering, longing look I take
At the bright sun.
For Death who puts to sleep both young and old
Hales my young life,
And beckons me to Acheron's dark fold,
An unwed wife.
No youths have sung the marriage song for me,
My bridal bed
No maids have strewn with flowers from the lea,
'Tis Death I wed. (806-813)
Antigone imagines death as a marriage, establishing yet another duality in the play.