Fate versus free will is a dominant theme of Sophocles’s Antigone. Although Antigone makes a conscious choice to risk her life by burying her brother, Sophocles hints that her life is the result of a predetermined destiny shaped by her family’s past. Which line in this excerpt from Antigone reflects Antigone’s helplessness with regard to her fate and her family’s past?
ANTIGONE:
Alack, alack! Ye mock me. Is it meet
Thus to insult me living, to my face?
Cease, by our country's altars I entreat,
Ye lordly rulers of a lordly race.
O fount of Dirce, wood-embowered plain
Where Theban chariots to victory speed,
Mark ye the cruel laws that now have wrought my bane,
The friends who show no pity in my need!
O monstrous doom,
Within a rock-built prison sepulchered,
To fade and wither in a living tomb,
And alien midst the living and the dead.
CHORUS:
In thy boldness over-rash
Madly thou thy foot didst dash
'Gainst high Justice' altar stair.
Thou a father's guilt dost bear.
1 answer
The line that reflects Antigone’s helplessness with regard to her fate and her family’s past is:
"O monstrous doom,
Within a rock-built prison sepulchered,
To fade and wither in a living tomb,
And alien midst the living and the dead."
This excerpt conveys her despair and the sense of being trapped by a fate that she cannot escape, highlighting her feelings of helplessness.
