What are the catastrophes in 'Antigone'?

Answer 1

The pestilence is the catastrophe in "Antigone" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. - 405 B.C.E.).

Specifically, a natural catastrophe is a sudden disaster that affects many people. A dramatic catastrophe is the event to which all of the play's action leads. In both cases, it is the pestilence in Thebes.

For example, the play's action relates to what to do with the bodies of the disloyal dead in the recent civil war over the royal succession. That the bodies are not buried means that the decay takes place above ground and brings on the subsequently pestilential environment. Additionally, the blood and the flesh of the unburied bodies are consumed by birds, who atypically fight among themselves and whose body parts cannot be read properly to understand divine will. Consequently, pestilence ravages Thebes and cannot be stopped until divine will is made known through Teiresias the blind prophet and carried out by Theban King Creon.

Just in terms of dramatic catastrophe, additional examples are the suicides of Princess Antigone, Prince Haemon and Queen Eurydice.