Masculinity In Antigone

Sophocles’ Antigone is known for being a very politically charged play, staged and restaged during times of political unrest. However, Antigone is not only a play about the politics of the polis and a tyrannical government, but about a young woman who only wanted to do right by her dead brother and give him the rights that he deserved. As Antigone is being sentenced to death, she makes the statement of “I am a stranger!” (Sophocles, 956) because her uncle, the new king of Thebes, and a group of men meant to represent the citizen of Thebes tell her that she is as much an outsider as a slave, and that her behavior is not one that is accepted in Thebes. Moreover, her long family history alienates her from her fellow Thebans, who have not suffered like she had, though a woman born of the gods has experienced a

She refers to her as “stranger queen from the east” (917) as she is Lydian born, but married Amphion, one of two brothers who, in mythology, usurped the throne of Thebes from Laius when he was younger, which would explain the reference. Moreover, Niobe and Antigone have more in common than their deaths, but also the cause of their deaths, which are both due to their hubris, and they’ve both found themselves the last or of the last of their families. While Antigone is a mortal while Niobe is of the gods, their commonalities make it so that this tragic plot occurs as a reflection of one another on two different levels: that of the gods and that of the mortal realm, and though the Chorus would claim that they are not the same because of their status, it is exactly because of it that this comparison is reinforced and why the exclamation of “I am a stranger!” (956) makes sense as both Niobe and Antigone do not have their places in both planes of the living and of the