A MODERN INTERPRETATION

OF ANCIENT PLOT IN
ANTIGONE

by Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987)
• Jean-Marie-Lucien-Pierre
Anouilh – French
playwright.
• He became one of the most
influential personalities of
the French theatre and
achieved an international
reputation.
• His plays are intensely
personal messages.
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987)

Anouilh’s characteristic techniques include:

• the play within the play,

• flashbacks and flash forwards,

• the exchange of roles.

Antigone (ancient Greek play)

• “Antigone” - a tragedy by the ancient Greek

playwright Sophocles (written around 442
BC).
• It deals with Antigone’s burial of her
brother Polynices, in defiance of the laws
of Creon and the state, and the tragic
repercussions of her act of civil disobedience.
Antigone (ancient Greek play)
• Although set in the city-state of Thebes many centuries
before Sophocles’ time, the play was actually written in
Athens during the rule of Pericles.
• It was a time of great national fervor, and Sophocles
himself was appointed as one of the ten generals to lead a
military expedition against Samos Island shortly after
the play’s release.
• Given this background, it is striking that the play contains
absolutely no political propaganda or contemporary
allusions or references to Athens, and indeed betrays no
patriotic interests whatsoever.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• On the surface, the plot revolves around the ideas that
seem most common in Greek tragedies: War, family,
betrayal, and tradition.
• But the real focus of the story is the struggle between
Antigone and Creon.
• In the aftermath of a fierce battle, two men who were vying
to rule Thebes, Eteocles and Polyneices, have both died.
• Their successor, Creon, decides that Polyneices, because
he was leading a foreign army, will be left unburied on the
field of battle.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• Antigone, Polyneices’ sister, disobeys Creon and buries
her brother anyway, pitting civil disobedience against
tradition and moral inflexibility.
• In other words, this 2,500-year-old play deals with the
same things the countries of the world have been
struggling with for centuries.
• That’s probably why the tragedy has endured.

• The updated version of Antigone by French playwright

Jean Anouilh in the 1940s used this famous plot as a
metaphor for the battle between the Nazi occupation
and the French Resistance.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• Antigone’s civil disobedience, which causes Creon to
sentence her to death, is a theme that is sadly relevant in
our current political climate.
• To be more clear, it has always been relevant.

• The central storyline and the reason for the conflict between
Creon and Antigone is a specific event, but it doesn’t come
down on one side or the other.
• We don’t necessarily get the sense that Antigone is right
and Creon is wrong.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh

• It raises questions about personal conscience,

choosing to do what you think is right
regardless of what the law says, and weighing
that against whether the law is necessary in order
to keep society from degenerating into anarchy
and chaos.
• It doesn’t really draw any conclusions or come
down on either side one way or the other.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh - themes

• The Individual vs. Society

• The Individual vs. Power

• Law vs. human/moral principles

• Sibling Rivalry

• Society's View of Femininity

Antigone by Jean Anouilh – Symbols & Motifs

• Eurydice's Knitting – a symbol of her life [When she stops

knitting she stops life itself. This is symbolic of the "thread of
life" in the Greek myth that shows life spun, measured and
cut by the Fates.]
• Creon Attacking Antigone

• The Chorus Motif – in Greek drama chorus is a group of

people (usually ten); Anouilh alters this dynamic and has
one person representing the Chorus.
• The Nature of Femininity Motif – a constant motif because
the key to the rivalry between Ismene and Antigone is their
oppositional appearances and views on what it means
to be feminine.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• Anouilh's play was interpreted from the Sophocles original
text during the German occupation of France during World
War II.
• It had to pass censorship by the German's in order to be
performed.
• The fact that it did was a miracle in itself as Antigone is a
character shouting for justice, and standing for it even to
the death against the tyranny of Creon's edict.
• Creon is a character that, quite possibly to the Germans
was sympathetic to their desire to reign over France and
the world: they were merely doing what was necessary to
"restore order."
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• But the price that Creon pays is the life of his son who
despises him for sentencing Antigone, his love, to her
death for burying her brother‘s body.
• The body of Polyneices lying to rot is a symbol of Creon
restoring order to the city of Thebes through political power.
• Creon knows it will instill the power and structure
necessary for his reign over the people of Thebes.
• The play represents the truth that the reasoning within
man, or the mind, cannot be separated from the spirit,
which is represented in Antigone's fight to bury Polynices in
order that his body may pass on to the afterlife.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• It becomes a matter of moral obligation for Antigone to
bury him regardless of the cost being her life.
• Antigone tells Creon the King that a body is not his to do
with as he pleases.
• In this we see the manipulation of politics in order to
create what they want the people to see and motivate
what they want them to do.
• All of this at the expense of Polynices spirit which Creon is
damning to never find rest by leaving him unburied.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• Creon's belief that he is doing the necessary thing
leads to Antigone's opposing fight to also do what she
believes is right, and in this case it is the moral right
rather than the political right.
• Because she will oppose him even to death she
challenges his power, and in so doing he must kill her or
risk losing control of the city he has just begun to reign
over.
• But in his lust for political power he loses love. 
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• Haemon, Creon’s son attempts to kill him in the cave
where Antigone has now hung herself.
• In this attempt we see Haemon's hatred towards his father
before he stabs and kills himself.
• Anouilh not only takes away Creon's son, but the emotion
of the final moment of Haemon's life will forever be that
Creon was hated with vile contempt by him.
• And to add further wounding, Creon's wife the Queen cuts
her throat to kill herself in her grief at losing her son.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
• In the end, Creon is left with what he valued most in his
life: his ruling power. And he simply moves forward with
his duties.

• This deepens the contrast between Oedipus and Creon:

• the former King sought truth at any cost, even his own
life in order to find peace,
• while Creon is willing to live with great pain as long as
he is in power and the people are under his rule.
Antigone by Jean Anouilh

Thank you
for your
attention!