1. Antigone believes that her moral duty to the gods is superior to her legal duty to the state, and she is willing to suffer the consequences in order to do what is morally right. In other words, should we do what is legal or what is right?
   
   
2. According to Nelson Mandela, “in life, every man has twin obligations – obligations to his family, to his parents, to his wife and children; and he has an obligation to his people, his community, his country.” How do the characters in the play approach these dual obligations? (Choose two characters to compare.)
   
   
3. Antigone is sometimes interpreted as a play that criticizes the function of government, specifically its authority to shape an ethical society. How does Creon fit into this role of government? What kind of governing authority does Creon represent? Does his role seem to be effective or ineffective? Why?
   
   
4. In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King writes that “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all’.” Engaging the text, explain how Antigone knows the difference between the just and the unjust law. (Is it significant that MLK refers to a religious figure—St. Augustine—in his explanation?)
   
   
5. Consider these quotations: 
   • The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (US Constitution, Amendment IV)
   • “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” (E. Snowden)
   • “The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights.” (E. Snowden)

      

Edward Snowden in 2013, exposed the US government’s National Security Agency’s massive data collection practice on its own people through their computer devices. Snowden was immediately charged with espionage and treason. He fled the US. He currently resides somewhere in Russia. The US government has promised him is that it will not torture him, but does intend to prosecute him. The Obama and Trump administrations vilified him. Snowden is a controversial figure: some call him a true patriot, while others call him a traitor. Snowden did what he thought—and still thinks—is the right thing. He has gone against the state because the state went against the Constitution. Write an essay that analyzes Eric Snowden’s disobedience of US law, ostensibly to protect Fourth Amendment rights.

6. In “Obedience As a Psychological and Moral Problem” (in On Disobedience and Other Essays), Erich Fromm suggests that to disobey “inhuman laws” is a sign of growth and separation from irrational authority. Fromm refers only briefly to Antigone but what he notes is telling: “Whenever the principles which are obeyed and those which are disobeyed are irreconcilable, an act of obedience to one principle is necessarily an act of disobedience to its counterpart, and vice versa. Antigone is the classic example of this dichotomy. By obeying the inhuman laws of the State, Antigone necessarily would disobey the laws of humanity.” Antigone cannot honor Creon’s law and honor, at the same time, her dead brother, Polyneices. She can only do one. And in the end, despite the consequences imposed on her by Creon, she makes the right decision. Write a paper that supports or challenges this assertion about Antigone’s choice.

7. View Theater of War’s production of Antigone in Ferguson. Then, below is a excerpt from Judith Butler’s essay “Antigone’s Claim” that deals with the way Butler thinks of Antigone within our contemporary culture: 

I have been interested in how certain kind of heterosexual frames and normative gender schemes make certain kind of lives unliveable and ungrievable. That was an important dimension of AIDS activism, and remains one now, especially in light of the sufferings and losses on the African continent: it is very often a struggle to make certain kinds of lost life publicly grievable. The deaths by AIDS were not shameful deaths, but horrible deaths that deserved and deserve a public mourning. In a way, that point brought me to consider Antigone, her insistence on burying her brother even when the open public burial and grieving was against the law. The politics of mourning within war is clearly linked to that question of the distribution and regulation of grievable lives. How do we think about who is grievable and who is not, who is allowed to grieve openly and who is not? And what kind of public speech…is needed to call attention to the horrifying way that our capacity to feel horror is differentially distributed and naturalized?

8. As we titled this conversation Antigone’s claim, so we may ask what would Antigone’s claim be for the present and how we understand her claim in the present. It seems to me that in insisting on the public grievability of lives, she becomes for us a war critic who opposes the arbitrary and violent force of sovereignty. In a way, she stands in advance for precarious lives, including new immigrants, the sans-papiers, those who are without health insurance, those who are differentially affected by the global economy, questions of poverty, of illiteracy, religious minorities, and the physically challenged. That she, in some sense, becomes a figure through whom we can think what it means to understand certain lives as more precarious than others, who live out a precariousness so that others can engage in the fantasy of their impermeability and omnipotence.

• • In the essay, you should summarize Butler’s ideas about what it means to have grievable and ungrievable lives. 
  • In the play, the ungrievable life is Polyneices’. What is the implicit connection is Theater of War making between Polyneices as a war criminal and Michael Brown and so many others as ungrievable lives? What does this connection make you think about in our contemporary culture?

     

Be sure that you explain clearly the connections that you are making between the two plays: Antigone and Antigone in Ferguson. Though they are essentially the same play, one, Antigone in Ferguson, is making a direct claim for the play. As you write, you will need to keep in mind that you are evaluating the plays based on the audience and circumstances for each.