Antigone v Ismene
It was fascinating to see right at the beginning how the two sisters are opposite from each other. Their first exchange of dialogue formed the two sisters personalities. Antigone asks her sister, "Will you take up that corpse along with me?" Ismene, "To bury him you mean, when it's forbidden?" Antigone, "My brother, and yours, though you may wish he were not. I never shall be found to be his traitor." Ismene, "O reckless one, when Creon spoke against it!" (Lines 43-47) One representing family, and religion, and the other representing the state laws, and fear. Antigone is a strong character; although she knows that her brother was a traitor, she still wants to do right by her family and bury her brother.
It is still odd that Antigone is loyal to "family" as such, as her family line is now so messed up that whenever she mentions her "brother" in the play you have to scramble to figure out if she's talking about Polyneices, Eteocles, or Oedipus! Loyalty to such a family must have some complications to it, especially since there is such a heinous lineage. At the same time, the gods seem to have allowed this to occur, and Antigone attributes the sufferings of her family to them in the beginning of the play. This complicates Antigone's seeming loyalty to these divine laws of Zeus and of the gods above. If they appear to be at least partially responsible for the suffering of her family, how does she see it so unconditionally and unquestionably right to submit to their rule of law? Shouldn't there be at least a nagging doubt in her soul as to the wisdom of the gods? Even if the answer still supports the gods as wise comptrollers of the Universe, shouldn't Antigone take a moment to think about this?
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