Sophocles Antigone: Play Analysis

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The definition of Natural Law states, “A body of principles that are considered to be inherent in nature and have universal application in determining whether human conduct is right or wrong, often contrasted with positive law.”-("Natural Law." The Free Dictionary. Web. 23 Oct. 2015). Sophocles’s play Antigone explores natural law by revealing a king who ignores it. In the play Antigone Creon has a son, Haemon who is engaged to Antigone. Which is the woman who breaks Creon’s law against burying Polyneices. Antigone buries Polyneices because he is her brother and at that time the people of Thebes believed that you would need a proper burial to travel across the River of Styx, to enter the afterlife. So this means that Creon was trying to take…show more content…
He was born June 28, 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland and died on July 02, 1778 in Ermenonville, France, and wrote in Du contrat social: Ou, Principes du droit politique(1762; A Treatise on the Social Contract: Or, The Principles of Political Law, 1764) that if a government acts contrary to the will of the people, the people have a right to replace it. This is what should have happened in Thebes during the time of Creon’s rule, the people should have taken power over Creon. As far as we knew all of the people of Thebes were against Creon’s law that forbid the burial of Polyneices, and punishment that Antigone was to go through. Also in one of Rousseau’s most radical works, A Discourse on the Origins of Inequality among Men, he states, Natural law is a set of laws or precepts created by God or Nature to regulate behavior for the better. These laws ordain what is right, and “must be” duties that apply to all. Creon was a Monarch. He believed in one person who would be sovereign over his…show more content…
Rousseau believed in equality of power, that every citizen held the same power. This creates a government that a single person can’t make extreme decisions without the convincing of the people. If Thebes applied Rousseau’s ideas on government, then Creon could have never of gone against the will of the people. Which in turn killed Creon’s entire family. This easily could've been avoided if Creon had given the people a say in what laws were to be passed. Instead, Creon ignored the people’s ideas and thought his ideas to be higher and more reliable than everyone else's beliefs in
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