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Concepts of Justice in The Bacchae and Antigone

 

            Sophocles and Euripides have provoked audiences for centuries to question what constitutes justice. While watching the various events onstage, spectators are led to ask if a definite form of justice exists in these plays, or whether notions of justice in the world are absurd. Furthermore, by presenting cases where justice is claimed to be enacted by a character or a god like force, the playwrights encourage speculation as to whether the punishments delivered are reasonable. .
             In "Antigone" and "The Bacchae," both authors address similar theme and concerns. Just as we saw in Plato's "Republic," the subject of the city-state and how it should be best governed and notions of civic and natural laws, are issues dealt with in these two plays. Through Antigone's main characters Antigone and Creon, Sophocles presents apparently conflicting notions of justice. Both maintain different views on what constitutes justice and through them Sophocles sets the values of the city-state against those of natural law.
             From the beginning, Antigone's desire to bury her dead brother provokes sympathy from the audience. The further emphasis she places on the gods' insistence on it being her duty to bury her dead brother solidifies the authority of her position. Antigone's opening dialogue with Ismene stresses that her loyalty is to the gods. "I'll lie there with him, with a man I love you can show contempt for those laws the gods all hold in honour"" (Line 86). In addition to this, the sentry's two accounts of how Polyneices' body was buried seemed to be mysteriously touched by the gods.
             "Then suddenly a swirling windstorm came, .
             whipping clouds of dust up from the ground,.
             filling the plain "some heaven-sent trouble"" (Line 470).
             When the idea is first posed by the Chorus that it might be the gods will to bury Polyneices, Creon defends his position by claiming that no god would bury a man that intended to burn their temples and pillage the land.


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