ONLY ANSWERS

Read the excerpt from the text of Antigone. Then, in one well-developed paragraph, make inferences about what kind of woman Antigone is. Explain how her words reveal her character. Use evidence from the excerpt to support your answer.

Then, in a second well-developed paragraph, state the theme and explain how Antigone—and her words in this excerpt—help develop the theme of the play. Use evidence from the excerpt to support your answer.

Creon [To Antigone]: Tell me, tell me briefly:
Had you heard my proclamation touching this matter?
Antigone: It was public. Could I help hearing it?
Creon: And yet you dared defy the law.
Antigone: I dared.

It was not God's proclamation. That final Justice
That rules the world below makes no such laws.
Your edict, King, was strong,
But all your strength is weakness itself against
The immortal unrecorded laws of God.
They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,
Operative forever, beyond man utterly.
I knew I must die, even without your decree:
I am only mortal. And if I must die
Now, before it is my time to die,
Surely this is no hardship: can anyone
Living, as I live, with evil all about me,
Think Death less than a friend? This death of mine
Is of no importance; but if I had left my brother
Lying in death unburied, I should have suffered.
Now I do not.
You smile at me. Ah Creon,
Think me a fool, if you like; but it may well be
That a fool convicts me of folly.