Similarities Between King And Antigone

Similar to Dr. King, Antigone also fights the law of the government, although in order to try and achieve a different resolution but fails unlike Dr. King. Antigone’s stakes justify her actions and although she sees it as her responsibility to bury her brother, she stands to lose more than Dr. King from failure as her life is on the line for her betrayal of the law. She however chooses to ignore the stakes as she realizes that what she has to lose compares nothing to what she and her family could gain. In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone makes a decision to bury her brother Polynieces, a traitor to her homeland of Thebes, because he is her brother and it is the duty of the women of the family to bury their family members if no more men are around to bury them (Sophocles, lines 30-65).
Antigone does not heed his edict and buries her brother anyway, stating that no law of man is higher than that of the God’s (Sophocles, lines 359-363). Through the reading, it can be seen that the Gods hold a high value in Grecian society and that no one should go against them, making Antigone’s stakes and willingness to lose her life justified as she is only trying to please the Gods. Antigone’s readiness to lose her life is justified as anyone in her position with her same belief in God would do the same. She knows her disobedience could lead to her death but due to the law of the gods, she realizes that the actions of burying her brother and giving him an eternal, blissful afterlife is more important than her own short, mortal life, as it gives dignity to her whole family (Sophocles, lines