Mirror up to action

Plot and story are two ideas that are often so intertwined they are seen to be the same thing. However, it is clear that while the plot is the same, the story of Antigone and Antigone are very different. While both speak to issues of justice and leadership, the historical uniqueness of each play points to the radical departure that Anouilh takes with the classic story.

Sophocles does not give the audience much in the way of moral ambiguity. The case is clear, and Creon suffers the death of his family from his unwavering resistance to permitting the burial rights of Polynices. The tragedy of Creon is a kind of mirror reflection of the tragedy of Oedipus in reverse. Oedipus, so deeply committed to finding out the truth and doing right by the gods causes his own demise. His quest for the truth sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Creon, in counterpoint, falls because of his resistance to what is right and just. Creon's unwillingness to change, his unwillingness to do what is demanded by the gods causes the ruin of his house.

In this way he echos too the role of Pentheus in The Bacchae with his unwavering commitment to the course of action he has chosen. That unwavering style of leadership brings down the mighty Pentheus, as he is slaughtered by his own mother as a kind of sacrifice to the Gods. In an interesting way this same ending is mirrored through the Chorus' incantation of Dionysos near the end of Sophocles' Antigone and the resultant bearing of the corpse of Haemon on stage. Through these similar structural events we see a kind of poetic end to the House of Cadmus.

But the central conflict in the two Antigone's is so different that we must look here first. In the Sophocles, the moral of the story is, obey the gods and you will be happy. That a striving for this kind of unwavering contentment and happiness is the highest goal attainable to humanity. Anouilh is strict contrast uses the common idea of human happiness as the point of no return for an until then wavering Antigone. In Creon's attempt to sway her he says that she should return to her room for soon she will marry Haemon and they will have a happy life.

But what is this happiness? To Antigone it is the height of human mediocrity. Be it the two point five kinds, white picket fence and dog of suburbia, or the court appearances, child bearing and queenly routine of head of state, she does not want it. She does not wish to fight over scraps of happiness like a dog fighting over a bone. No she wants the entirety of her desire NOW. Compromise is not something she is willing, or indeed able to strive for. The height of despair to her is succumbing to that mediocre compromise. To live not for herself but for a role written for her.

I found it interesting to read George's piece on Lacan the other day in light of this play. For the Anouilh play clearly takes an idea of us being inscribed in our roles. This is a clear textual device employed to help point to the futility of human action. Yet, Antigone and indeed all authentic beings, are oriented towards this inscription in a fundamentally different way than the mass of humanity. The journey of Antigone is at one level a story of growing up and coming into one's own. Of making independent choices and suffering the consequences there of. But that is more the Sophocles than the Anouilh. The story of Anouilh's Antigone is one of transition from caricature to character. From inauthentic to authentic actor.

The true genius of Anhouilh is that he gives us that struggle, that hard fought struggle, and never wavers from the story. In fact, Antigone at a literal factual level, maintains the same course of action she set out on at the beginning of the play. Yet, when she rejects the mediocrity of happiness and truly explores her motivations for her actions and then continues from that true and authentic place, she has become whole. The significance of her actions change not because the actions themselves change, but because the motives behind them change.

Anouilh further addresses this struggle in yet another subtle and interesting way. He is very precise to avoid the kind of moralizing that is infused throughout the Sophocles. Instead of dividing the world between the Good and the Bad, he shows how the moral and ethical systems of both Antigone and Creon are valid from within their own view point. Even the guards who are wholly unable to delve deeper than the merest surface of being are treated in a dramatically sympathetic way. He gives a choice to his audience, albeit within a rather limited fashion. While the course of ones life may well already be written, our actions prescribed by some divine playwright who has orchestrated the events of our lives, still we are able to choose. Within that tightly controlled formula of our life story we hold within us the freedom of authentic action.