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Abstract
This study establishes parallels between the biological fratricide in Sophocles’ Antígone and the metaphorical fratricide in Griselda Gambaro's Antígona furiosa (Buenos Aires, 1986). The article examines how in both plays Antigone seeks to defend her dead brother in her quest for closure. The biological fratricide over power in Thebes, which left both Eteocles and Polynices dead, and the metaphorical fratricide carried out in Argentina between the followers of Perón and those who opposed his ideology are strikingly similar. The assassinations of numerous Argentine citizens and the disappearance of others resulted in parallel actions to defend the dead and seek closure. Gambaro, this study argues, saw clearly what was happening in her country and used the repressive military regime that came into power in 1976 as a metaphor for the right-wing faction of society—a metaphor for Eteocles who refused to relinquish his rule after one year. Gambaro used the disappeared as a metaphor for Polynices—the unburied whose families cannot reach closure.