Free Destiny vs. Controlled Fate in Antigone Essay -- Sophocles

Fate is an old debated concept. Do one's actions truly play a role in determining one's life? Is fate freedom to some or is it binding to others, in that no individual can make completely individual decisions, and therefore, no one is truly free. Nowadays, fate is a subject often rejected in society, as it is seen as too big, too idealistic, and too hard to wrap a persons head around. However, at the time of Antigone, the concept was a terrifying reality for most people. Fate is the will of the gods, and as is apparent in Antigone, the gods' will is not to be questioned. Much of Sophocles' work focuses on the struggle between human law and what is believed to be the god’s law. Fate was an unstoppable force and it was assumed that any efforts to change one's future were unrealistic. In Sophocles' Antigone, fate plays a crucial role the choices that the characters make. Most people believe that Creon and Antigone were under the influence of forces that they could not control, in the decisions they made and the actions that they took. Despite Antigone's morals and her practice of those morals, she cannot escape the family curse. She states, â€Å"You would think that we had already suffered enough for the curse on Oedipus† (prologue.2-3). Ironically Antigone will suffer the rest of her life because of what her father/brother did. Her life had been rocked so much by this family curse that only Ismene remains, and she lost the last thing that mattered to her--her sister Antigone, who surprisingly took her own life. Antigone’s strong beliefs in the god’s laws can really be heard when she said â€Å"†¦Your edict, King, was strong, but all your strength is weakness itself against the immortal unrecorded laws of god. They are not merely now: they ... ...n offering at the altar but the god of fire failed me so the flame never blazed† (5.10-22). The birds may symbolize the family, two brothers killing each other, Creon sentencing Antigone to die. Or Antigone opting to hang herself which leads Haimon to try and kill his father but getting killed himself instead, and as a result Creon's wife commits suicide. The gods don't show acceptance of this situation, because the family has been doomed into the fate of death. A lot can be learned about an author by just reading his or her works. For instance one can easily learn about Sophocles’ view on fate just by reading Antigone. Much of Sophocles' work focuses on the struggle between human law and what is believed to be the god’s law. Sophocles believed that Fate was an unstoppable force and it was assumed that any efforts to change one's future were completely unrealistic.