The basic plot of Antigone is that there is a civil war in Thebes between two families who want to rule it. The result is that Creon becomes king. He decrees that no one from the losing side of the war is to be buried. Polyneices, the brother of the title character Antigone, is among the fallen. Antigone, against the advice of her sister Ismene, wants to bury him even though she knows Creon will kill her if she does. Creon and Antigone fight about it. She tries to bury Polyneices and is buried alive for it by Creon. Creon is visited by the blind prophet Tiresias who tells him the gods will be very angry and do horrible things to him and his family if he doesn’t free Antigone and bury Polyneices. The city of Thebes will suffer along with him even though most of them did nothing wrong. He does as he was asked but the terrible things happen anyway.

From Wikipedia.com

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Antigone deals with three main questions:
whether Polyneices ought to be given burial rituals
whether someone who buried him in defiance of state ought to be punished
whether Creon is entitled to the throne
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The plot of Antigone does involve ignorance. Creon thinks that just because he is king, he can ignore the gods and make any rules he wants. The gods punish him for thinking he is better than they are.

There are several ways to figure out the plot of a play. Some people figure it out from both reading and watching the play. You can often fill any gaps in your learning from one method by employing the other. You can buy Cliff’s Notes for the play. Cliff’s Notes usually contain plot summaries. You can also look up the plot of many plays online by searching for “Play Title” and “Plot Summary” together.

Antigone is the second of the Theban Trilogy, by Sophocles. Oedipus has been dethroned because of his awful actions and his two sons have fought for the throne, tragically killing each other. Creon, the eventual man to who the crown falls, favors Eteocles and frowned on Polyneices, the two sons. Creon decrees that Polyneices will not have a proper burial, which will keep him out of the afterworld, a fate literally worse than death for those in Sophocles’ audience. Antigone, sister to the two brothers, defies Creon’s order. The plot thickens because Creon’s son, Haemon is engaged to Antigone. The chorus tells Creon that his order is arrogant and defiles the gods, another huge problem for the audience to watch. Imagine calling the NYPD horrible, unprintable names two days after Sept. 11 and praising Osama bin Laden instead. It was something THAT bad. Creon relents, but not before the gods punish him for his arrogance and defiance, the two problems that actually caused his predecessor’s downfall and his ascension to the throne. He comes out not quite as badly as Oedipus, but he is not happy for his defiance, one message that Sophocles surely intended for his audience.