Antígona

Antigone is faced with the doubt of being faithful to her most intimate beliefs, which compel her to bury her late brother Polynices, or to obey the public law of Thebes recently enacted by the new king of that city, her uncle Creon, which punishes the serious offense of Polynices against Thebes while drastically forbidding his burial. Anyone who disobeys this law will be sentenced to death. But unexpectedly Antigone, a young woman, almost a child, disobeys her openly, heroically, manfully, knowing full well that this will cost her her life. Antigone raises questions of law and morality that are as rabidly valid today as they were more than two thousand years ago. The opposition between the civic order, on the one hand, and the family and religious imperative, on the other, is the great theme debated in this tragedy, no doubt, but a contemporary reading also leads us to reflect on the ( im)pertinence of civil disobedience, on the freedom of individuals and the totalitarianism of states, on democracy and tyranny, on the meaning of wars and the strength of love, on gender roles and gender roles age, and ultimately leads us to look in the mirror again, as human beings and as a society.