“Antigone” by Sophocles: Sentry hears funny voice of alternate personality, while Antigone, Creon, Haemon, Eurydice have tragic single-mindedness.

There are only two characters in this play who hear voices: Tiresias, the blind prophet, and the Sentry. Tiresias hears “a strange voice in the wingbeats [of birds], unintelligible, barbaric, a mad scream!” (1, p. 111). Sentry is the only character who hears a voice that is so distinct, it is quotable, and which is not only intelligible, but has a sense of humor:

SENTRY:

“My Lord [speaking to King Creon],

I can’t say I’m winded from running, or set out

with any spring in my legs either—no sir,

I was lost in thought, and it made me stop, often,

dead in my tracks, wheeling, turning back,

and all the time a voice inside me muttering,

‘Idiot, why? You’re going straight to your death.’

Then muttering, ‘Stopped again, poor fool?

If somebody gets the news to Creon first,

what’s to save your neck?’ ” (1, p. 70).

Sentry has news that Antigone has violated King Creon’s prohibition against burying her treasonous brother. If he does not tell the King, someone else might do so first and put the blame on him. But if he does tell the King, the King might kill a messenger who brings such bad news.

What is the significance of Sentry’s hearing such voices? They are not the irrational or delusional voices of psychosis, which are usually experienced or interpreted by the person as originating from the outside. But neither are these voices experienced by Sentry as simply his own thoughts. Sentry does not say he was ambivalent and thought this and that, but that a voice told him first this and then that, a voice that he quotes, as though it were another person whose comments he heard. Voices such as this may be the voices of alternate personalities.

None of the other characters mentioned in the title of this post hears voices. And they are not able to break out of their single, tragic, point of view (Creon does at the end, but it is too late). They come to a tragic end, because they are so single-minded.

In short, one of the lessons of Antigone is that single-mindedness can be tragic, while multiple personality, though it may seem like a joke to people unfamiliar with it, may sometimes be healthier.

1. Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York, Penguin Books, 1984.