Burial and Entombment: The Defining Action and Corresponding Imagery in Antigone

I
recent­ly read Sophocles’s Antigone[1]
in the Clas­si­cal Read­ings course that I’m enrolled in as part of Rose­mont
College’s MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram. I found the text full of provoca­tive,
mor­bid lan­guage, from phras­es such as “breath­less dead” (942) to “strange new
tomb” (939), used to set the tone and mood of the play, but what real­ly caught
my atten­tion was how her brother’s bur­ial became the pro­tag­o­nist Antigone’s
defin­ing action. In this essay, I’ll dis­cuss how her defin­ing action
cor­re­sponds with sym­bol­ic entomb­ment imagery used in the play to asso­ciate Antigone
with death and her fate. I’ll also dis­cuss how con­tem­po­rary fic­tion writ­ers can
use a sim­i­lar tech­nique today.

            Antigone per­forms the defin­ing
action when she buries her broth­er Polyn­ices.
Believ­ing that the gods will her to do so, she con­fi­dent­ly breaks her uncle King
Creon’s law that states any­one caught bury­ing the body will be stoned to death.
Antigone buries her broth­er alone, but Creon’s min­ions dis­cov­er her. Cre­on
gives Antigone the chance to say she’s igno­rant of the law, but she doesn’t do so,
insult­ing and defy­ing him, and he ulti­mate­ly pun­ish­es her by entomb­ing her
alive. In the tomb, she hangs her­self with a noose, set­ting oth­er trag­ic deaths
in motion. Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé, kills him­self after he
finds Antigone’s dead body. Also, Queen Eury­dice com­mits sui­cide after she
dis­cov­ers her son is dead as a result of Creon’s unjust actions.

Antigone’s defin­ing action is cru­cial to
the cen­tral con­flict of the play. As Bainard Cow­an dis­cuss­es in “Tar­ry­ing with
the Tragedy: Hegel and His Crit­ics,” Hegel writes about “Kol­li­sion” as “the
seri­ous­ness and impor­tance of the sit­u­a­tion in its spe­cial char­ac­ter can only
begin when its def­i­nite­ness comes into promi­nence as an essen­tial dif­fer­ence
and, by being in oppo­si­tion to some­thing else, is the basis of a col­li­sion.”[2]
Accord­ing to Hegel, tragedy con­tains col­li­sion, or con­flict, and the “spe­cial
char­ac­ter” is the moti­vat­ing desire that dri­ves char­ac­ters into con­flict, link­ing
them to a defin­ing action–one moment that reveals this desire and the char­ac­ters’
true nature that also shapes their fate. When Antigone buries Polyn­ices, she rejects
Creon’s patri­ar­chal law, all the while link­ing her­self with imagery asso­ci­at­ed
with death. In short, the act of bury­ing her broth­er deter­mines who Antigone is–a
brave anti-author­i­tar­i­an woman unafraid to chal­lenge her elders, men, her
fam­i­ly, or the law. The bur­ial reveals she is not afraid of a dead body or
death itself. In fact, she desires death only sec­ond to a prop­er bur­ial for her
broth­er.

What’s more, bury­ing Polyn­ices fore­shad­ows
Antigone’s fate as the play unfolds. After Cre­on orders her to be entombed as
pun­ish­ment, drag­ging her “down to death alive” (958), the equiv­a­lent of being
buried alive, he deliv­ers to Antigone the bur­ial she so long desires in the
“death pit of the dead” (910). While still alive, she’s in despair, but she
com­mits sui­cide in the tomb, ful­ly achiev­ing the bur­ial.

Antigone’s defin­ing action pro­vokes her
pun­ish­ment and influ­ences mir­ror­ing imagery lat­er in the play. For exam­ple, the
tomb, which Antigone refers to as a “prison” (978), reflects upon her defin­ing
action–wouldn’t have Antigone pre­ferred it for Polyn­ices to have a tomb? Didn’t
she try to cre­ate one for him? A fem­i­nist read­ing reveals that “Antigone’s
deci­sion to act chal­lenges the gen­der order that sus­tains Creon’s pol­i­tics.”[3]
Thus, Cre­on places Antigone back in the tomb or prison of patri­ar­chal law. 

As a writer of flash fic­tion, I’m always
look­ing for ways to define a char­ac­ter through his or her actions and devel­op
cor­re­spond­ing imagery, reveal­ing com­pelling truths about my char­ac­ters, while
dri­ving the sto­ry for­ward. Antigone inspired
a revi­sion of my flash fic­tion text “The Ghost of Natal­ie Wood” In the sto­ry,
the pro­tag­o­nist Steven is afraid of los­ing his girl­friend, Eva, because he
can’t sati­ate her emo­tion­al and sex­u­al desires. In the begin­ning, he wants to
keep his rela­tion­ship alive. How­ev­er, this belief turns out to be fleet­ing
since Steven–a very judg­men­tal person–changes his mind about Eva as the sto­ry
unfolds. His defin­ing action comes at the begin­ning when he dress­es in a
judge’s robe to spend time with Eva, who plans to dress up as the deceased
Natal­ie Wood to spice up their sex life. 

The judge’s robe is sym­bol­ic to the sto­ry
and rep­re­sents how Steven is weigh­ing whether he should stay with Eva or leave
her. For exam­ple, he remem­bers how thought­ful she behaves when they first met,
but he con­trasts that ver­sion of her with the way she acts on a recent week­end
get­away when she seduces him on a dock. He sees her in a dif­fer­ent light after that
week­end, and his opin­ion about her begins to change. Also, the judge’s robe
reveals that Steven is a judg­men­tal per­son. He has a clear idea of what a woman
should behave like, and, once he gets to know Eva, she defies that image. 

Steven faces con­flict when Eva dress­es up
as the deceased Natal­ie Wood–an actress he doesn’t think high­ly of–before
ini­ti­at­ing sex. Not only does he real­ize he can’t quench Eva’s sex­u­al desires,
but he real­izes he no longer wants to. Eva turns him off with the way she roman­ti­cizes
Wood, the trag­ic Hol­ly­wood hero­ine, and looks to the taboo to become aroused–the
dead. Like Antigone, Steven faces death–though a metaphor­i­cal one–as he stares
at Eva mim­ic­k­ing the dead actress. Also like Antigone, Steven is an active, not
pas­sive, pro­tag­o­nist who isn’t afraid to act with con­vic­tion. He gath­ers his
courage (with the help of some whiskey), faces his feel­ings about Eva, and he kills
the rela­tion­ship after she push­es him past his break­ing point. Through his
defin­ing action–dressing up as a judge–Steven becomes a stronger, more engag­ing
char­ac­ter.

While the entomb­ment and live bur­ial imagery
and sym­bol­ism in Antigone are entic­ing,
I shied away from them since they are famil­iar. For exam­ple, Poe uses pre­ma­ture
buri­als in his sto­ries “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”[4]
and “The Pre­ma­ture Bur­ial.”[5]
Block­buster movies have also drawn upon the image, includ­ing Quentin Tarantino’s
tril­o­gy Kill Bill: Vol. 1, where
Black Mam­ba, played by Uma Thur­man, wakes up in a cof­fin buried under­ground.
Black Mam­ba, a skilled mar­tial arts expert, uti­lizes her train­ing to break free
from the tomb by punch­ing a hole in the cof­fin. By doing so, she sym­bol­izes
that women have bro­ken out of the box.[6]
While patri­archy is not ful­ly extinct, the anti-author­i­tar­i­an female arche­type
refus­es to be impris­oned in con­tem­po­rary times. Good for her. I wouldn’t dare put
her back in her tomb.

In Antigone,
Sopho­cles cre­at­ed a unique defin­ing action that could only belong to Antigone,
while sup­port­ing it with robust imagery sym­bol­ic to the play, work­ing with in
one con­text to devel­op a com­plete frame­work. You, too, can look to Antigone to find inspi­ra­tion to do so, as
I have attempt­ed to do in “The Ghost of Natal­ie Wood.” How would you go about
doing so? For starters, you must under­stand your char­ac­ter and what his or her
fate will be. Next, allow the defin­ing action to dri­ve the char­ac­ter into
con­flict. Then, draw upon rel­e­vant, cor­re­spond­ing images to reveal your
character’s desires through sym­bol­ic imagery, using sup­port­ing lan­guage. Remem­ber
the defin­ing action you devel­op must be an orig­i­nal, excit­ing premise that
works as a uni­fy­ing whole, clue­ing the read­er in to the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and
the fate of your cen­tral char­ac­ter or char­ac­ters.

Bib­li­og­ra­phy 

Cow­an, Bainard, “Tar­ry­ing With the
Trag­ic, Hegel and His Crit­ics,” in The
Trag­ic Abyss, ed. Glenn Arbery, 39–58. Dal­las, Texas: Dal­las Insti­tute
Pub­li­ca­tions, 2004.

Hawkesworth, Mary, The Semi­otics of
Pre­ma­ture Bur­ial: Fem­i­nism in a Post­fem­i­nist Age, Signs 115 Vol. 29, No. 4 (Sum­mer 2004): 961–985.

Poe, Edgar
Allan, “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” in The
Com­plete Tails and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, 231–245. New York: Vin­tage, 1975. 

Poe, Edgar
Allan, “The Pre­ma­ture Bur­ial,” in The
Com­plete Tails and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, 258–268. New York: Vin­tage, 1975.

Sopho­cles, Antigone, in Three The­ban Plays, trans­lat­ed by Robert Fagles, 55–128. New York:
Pen­guin, 1984.

Taran­ti­no, Quentin, Kill Bill: Vol.1. DVD. Direct­ed by Quentin Taran­ti­no. Los Ange­les,
CA: Mira­max Films, 2003.

Author’s Note

Tiffany Sum­n­er is a flash fic­tion writer, aspir­ing nov­el­ist, and degree-can­di­date in Rose­mont College’s MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram. Ear­li­er this year, she relo­cat­ed to Philadel­phia by way of Brook­lyn and is earn­ing a liv­ing writ­ing about shoes, mobile apps, edu­ca­tion and tax­es. Yes, tax­es. She is a con­tribut­ing fic­tion writer for Red Door Mag­a­zine and a pret­ty a-okay cook. Orig­i­nal­ly from Vir­ginia, Tiffany lives in South Philly with her boyfriend and their two cats–Stitches and Madame Snug­gle­whiskers. Learn more about Tiffany on her blog Roja ChaCha.