Question

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 helplessness with regard to her fate and her family’s past?

Cease, by our country's altars I entreat

Mark ye the cruel laws that now have wrought my bane,

And alien midst the living and the dead.

Thou a father's guild dost bear.

Answer 1

I think that in these lines she admits her helplessness:

Alack, alack! Ye mock me. Is it meet Thus to insult me living, to my face?
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In there she compares her with slave of destiny :

O monstrous doom,Within a rock-built prison sepulchered,To fade and wither in a living tomb
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And there she represents how she belongs to her family and can't confront the fate her family has builded for her: In thy boldness over-rashMadly thou thy foot didst dash' Gainst high Justice' altar stair.Thou a father's guild dost bear.

Answer 2

Thou a father's guild dost bear.

Step-by-step explanation:

This is the line that suggests that Antigone's destiny is to some extent a consequence of her family's past. In this line, we learn that Antigone was unable to escape a destiny that had already been established for her. We learn that she "bears" the destiny of her father. This shows that, to some extent, Antigone's actions were not the only reasons why her fate was determined in such a tragic way.