Scholarship at UWindsor

At Death’s Door: Unsuccessful Political Entreaties in Antigone and The Apology

In this paper, I compare the positions of two iconoclasts on the brink of death, Antigone in Sophocles’ Antigone and Socrates in Plato’s Apology, as well as their motivations for addressing the public while facing execution, examining controversial lines from both works. First I assay Antigone’s final lament, focusing on her statement that she would not bestow the same burial honors on a husband or child as she did for her brother (lines 967-970). This is followed by an analysis of Socrates’ defense speech, focusing on his claim to be the wisest human living (23b). I study the contexts of age, honor, political astuteness, and the direct conflict between interests of the State and those of the individual, and I inspect the type and level of impact these have on the aforementioned speeches. I speculate that the human fear of death causes both Antigone and Socrates to temporarily put aside personal motivations and assume the interests of the State in order to sway their respective audiences. Finally, I show that the unflattering portraits Antigone and Socrates create of themselves are not the result of personal flaws but rather their inexperience with public appeal and their ultimate inability, amidst fear, to move the common people.