Question

In what way does William Butler Yeats’s poem “From the ‘Antigone’” parallel Sophocles’s Antigone? A. The speaker in the poem, and the chorus in the play, lament noble Antigone's terrible fate. B. Like the play, the poem has Ismene trying to dissuade Antigone from defying Creon. C. The poem and play both describe the moment when Haemon and Eurydice perish. D. The end of the poem shows Creon reduced to a lonely, decrepit man, as does the play.

Answer 1

William Butler Yeats's poem "From the 'Antigone'" parallels Sophocles's Antigone because (A.) the speaker in the poem, and the chorus in the play, lament noble Antigone's terrible fate.

Sophocles's Antigone focuses on the story of Antigone, who decides to bury her brother despite the king's orders. In the play, Antigone pays obedience to the law of the gods since it establishes that no man should remain unburied. Furthermore, it is her loyalty towards Polynices what leads her to her own death. In the play, the chorus laments her terrible fate. In Yeats's poem, which does not include Antigone's conflict with Ismene nor the moment when Haemon and Euridyce perish, the speaker also discusses the power of fate and laments Antigone's death ("And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child  Descends into the loveless dust").