Sheila Watson's short story, "Antigone," utilizes many of the tensions typical to poetry. For example, the tension between past and present is apparent in the subtle differences to the Antigone myth upon which this story is based. The tension between idea and image is suggested by the explicit collation of characters with mythic figures. As well, the poetic tension between silence and words is deployed in "Antigone" to create spaces for the echoes of the words around them; these spaces allow room for the reader to interpret and thus add to the story, as happens in poetry as well as in mythology. Watson's non-conformity to the accepted rules of story-writing playfully echoes Antigone's defiance.
