Question

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?

Answer 1

I think that in these lines she admits her helplessness:

Alack, alack! Ye mock me. Is it meet Thus to insult me living, to my face?
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In there she compares her with slave of destiny :

O monstrous doom,Within a rock-built prison sepulchered,To fade and wither in a living tomb
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And there she represents how she belongs to her family  and can't confront the fate her family has builded for her: In thy boldness over-rashMadly thou thy foot didst dash'  Gainst high Justice' altar stair.Thou a father's guild dost bear.