Editing Antigone (Sophocles play) (section)

===Civil disobedience===
[[File:Sébastien Norblin Antigone et Polynice.JPG|thumb|265x265px|Antigone being captured and arrested for the burial of her brother, [[Polynices]]. Sébastien Norblin, 1825.]]
A well established theme in ''Antigone'' is the right of the individual to reject society's infringement on one's freedom to perform a personal obligation.<ref name="levy">{{cite journal | last = Levy | first = Charles S. | title = Antigone's Motives: A Suggested Interpretation | journal = [[Transactions of the American Philological Association]] | volume = 94 | pages = 137–44 | year = 1963 | doi = 10.2307/283641| jstor = 283641}}</ref> Antigone comments to Ismene, regarding Creon's edict, that "He has no right to keep me from my own."<ref>{{cite book | author = Sophocles | title = Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone | others = Translated by David Grene | page = Line 48 | publisher = University of Chicago Publishers | year = 1991 | isbn = 978-0226307923 | url = https://archive.org/details/sophoclesioedipu00soph }}</ref> Related to this theme is the question of whether Antigone's will to bury her brother is based on rational thought or instinct, a debate whose contributors include [[Goethe]].<ref name="levy"/>

The contrasting views of Creon and Antigone with regard to laws higher than those of state inform their different conclusions about civil disobedience. Creon demands obedience to the law above all else, right or wrong. He says that "there is nothing worse than disobedience to authority" (''An.'' 671). Antigone responds with the idea that state law is not absolute, and that it can be broken in civil disobedience in extreme cases, such as honoring the gods, whose rule and authority outweigh Creon's.