Human Traditions II Conflict and Chaos essay: ANTIGONE AND ISMENE

There have been many rivers I’ve found my sister and I unable to cross as daughters of
royal blood surrounded by man; but right now my hands are cupped for understanding at my sister’s foot, and my body has grown tired of swimming. We are women, I understand that all we’ve come to know is effort through negotiation with vapid men but my sister has turned a blind eye to sympathy and now, of all times, she stands with the pride of a schoolboy.

Stubborn. Egotistical. Ruthless in her wake as she stood against me moments before.
There are a thousand names I could call Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, before docile would ever let my lips part.

When Antigone and I were born, it was of uneven cut. She was a rash hot head that held
her ground. She might use the words “timid” or “shy” to describe me, but she doesn’t know that I am strong enough to be gentle. That there is a power in knowing the future could fall in your lap if she’d have the self control to listen for it.

Separation has no room between kin, Antigone sleeps as a bird in my heart and though
there have been times where she’d rather roam free, she’s strayed too far tonight. So here I stand pacing, a mess of myself as I listen through the palace double doors for the punishment she’ll bear that’ll toil like a broken bell through the hearts of Thebes.

My biggest fear is that not even death could separate us; for my sister, love and suffering
go hand in hand for anyone who knows her. But Antigone is one for the people; for Creon to not see that frightens even me. For kin to fight like this, for Antigone to have the spotlight in this dance with death- Creon must be a King only in title. Where is there a place for a king to stand between siblings when not even Gods can? The only thing Creon stands for now are the vestiges of law that’ll ring from his mouth till his dying breath. Not even the people can agree with Creon now. May his name be forgotten when he kills the martyr that will be Antigone.

From where I kneel peeking through these palace double doors, I can see Antigone
pacing and spouting hatred from a throne eye level to Creon’s. I watch her argue with a toddler and the worst part is that she’s stooping to his level. I wish she’d let this rest and come back to my arms. To be girls together one last time, if only she’d let me brush her hair while Oediupus watched from his throne. If only I could make paint brushes from my own hairs that have angrily stood on end as I think of ways I could change Antigone’s mind- each brushstroke would be an essay on the loss of our siblings who met their fates on the battlefield.

Antigone is doing the impossible, while she stands her ground for our dear Polyneices
and tries to remove the fragrance of Godhood from a man, I sit and I listen just as I always have. Perhaps fate has already started to play out around me when I watch as the double doors open before me, or maybe it was when Creon claimed Antigone had died the second she buried Polyneices.

I know I should have prepared myself to hear the news of what will become of her, for I
don’t recognize who she’s become in the wake of her wrath; but what I do know is that Creon is wrong. Antigone will be immortalized in her dying breaths when the crows pick her apart, when Creon removes the boulder to the cave where she’s been starved, even if Antigone is stonedyou’ll still be able to hear my sister’s cries for justice amongst the air of the complacent.