Steiner

Some of my favorite lines from Steiner:
"For if no human pollution can defile the gods, then the non-burial of Polyneices is a trivial immanent act. And Antigone's agnostic reflex becomes simultaneously excessive and reducible to a wholly private, sentimental impulse. The tragedy need not have been."

I absolutely adore this line and wonder where George Steiner was during the time of Antigone. Steiner has absolutely reasoned out why Antigone should not be sentenced to death for what she has done and had he been around to inform the not so level headed Creon of this he may have avoided his mistake.

"Antigone does not appeal for divine help in the execution of her pious design. No supplication either to Zeus or to the eternal custodians of the dead graces her resolve. The successive innvocations of 'eternally all-seeing Zeus' (line 184) comes from the lips of Creon."

I also like this line from Steiner because I think it shows something very meaningful I observed in the book. Creon is the pious man yet he is not godly by our definition at all. Countless times Creon spits vile on the gender of women and behaves in an extremely ungodly manner. Yet, here is Antigone the one who has been deemed challenging the gods behaving the most godly of anyone. This sums up the entirety of Antigone for me as a reader.