Who is Antigone in Oedipus at Colonus?

Antigone in Oedipus at Colonus is the loyal daughter who leads her blind father into exile, argues with Theban envoys, and shares his life in the sacred grove. She is not yet the defiant buriar of the later play, but the same moral fiber appears: she chooses kin duty over comfort and stays when Ismene arrives with news from Thebes.

Her devotion makes Creon’s kidnapping especially cruel and Theseus’s rescue especially just. She will leave at the end to tend her father’s memory and return toward a city about to destroy itself in civil war. Classroom introductions should connect Colonus Antigone to Antigone Antigone — one continuous arc of loyalty — without spoiling the tragedy’s specific conflict over Polynices’s corpse.