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 with regard to her fate and her family’s past?
antigone:
alack, alack! ye mock me. is it meet
thus to insult me living, to my face?
cease, by our country's altars i entreat,
ye lordly rulers of a lordly race.
o fount of dirce, wood-embowered plain
where theban chariots to victory speed,
mark ye the cruel laws that now have wrought my bane,
the friends who show no pity in my need!
o monstrous doom,
within a rock-built prison sepulchered,
to fade and wither in a living tomb,
and alien midst the living and the dead.
chorus:
in thy boldness over-rash
madly thou thy foot didst dash
'gainst high justice' altar stair.
thou a father's guild dost bear.