Antigone: An Exercise in Triolectics

We take a fresh look at Sophocles’ AntigoneAntigone by applying strategic reasoning and game-theoretical concepts—asking whether AntigoneAntigone was trapped by Creon or whether Creon was trapped by AntigoneAntigone. The plot is the following: Creon, occupant of the throne of Thebes, seeking to consolidate his rule, decrees that Polynices, Creon’s nephew and enemy, who defeated his own brother Eteocles, must remain unburied and unmourned. Violators will be punished by death. AntigoneAntigone, Polynices’ sister and Creon’s niece, with a strong claim to the throne herself, challenges the decree and administers the burial rituals for her brother. When found out, she was punished being buried alive in a rocky vault. She commits suicideSuicide not knowing that “in the meantime” Creon has repealed his decree. Creon retracted the harsh punishment before hearing of Antigone’sAntigone death. A discussion of the highly politized mise-en-scène of the play in Helsinki in 1901, Bertolt Brecht’sBrecht, Bertolt AntigoneAntigone, and the reinterpretation of the play by Slavoj ŽižekŽižek, Slavoj, first published in 2016, demonstrates the timelessness and universality of Sophocles’ AntigoneAntigone.