Fate versus free will is a dominant theme of Sophocles’s Antigone. Although Antigone makes a conscious choice to risk her life b
y 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?
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? --- 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 -------
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.<span>Thou a father's guild dost bear.</span>
