Antigone: Scene 2

Summary:

• The Sentry (a messenger) brings Antigone to Creon.
• He tells Creon that he has witnessed Antigone burying her traitorous brother, Eteocles.
• When Creon confronts Antigone, she immediately admits that she did, in fact, bury her brother.
• She did this because she feels like her morality ("God's laws") are far more important than Creon's law about not burying the brother ("Man's laws").
• Creon is outraged.
• Creon asks his people to bring Antigone's sister, Ismene, to him.
• He thinks that Ismene helped bury Eteocles, but the audience knows that she did not. (This is an example of dramatic irony).
• Ismene offers to help take the blame for the crime, but Antigone rejects her help.
• Antigone thinks: My sister didn't help me bury him, so why should she try to take credit for it now? I did the right thing by burying him, and my sister did not.
• Creon is pretty angry that Antigone buried Eteocles. He immediately sentences Antigone and her sister Ismene to death, even though Ismene didn't really do it.

Antigone in front of Creon, being sentenced to death.