In "Antigone," Sheila Watson juxtaposes the desire for order and stability within families, institutions, and governments against the ominous threat of madness and anarchy. Through the appropriation and reshaping of classical myth, Watson explores many topics: Michel Foucault's concept of discipline as a covert form of power; the shadowy line between sites of danger and safety; the problems created by boundaries and borders; the ambivalence between the idea of nature as a walled paradise or an unruly wilderness; and the importance of ritual to society. Antigone transgresses the public peace in Creon's kingdom through her subversive burial ceremony of a sparrow on the hospital grounds. As in the other three Oedipal narratives, Watson uses madness to signal atrophy and to indicate the need for change; through Creon and Antigone, Watson explores through the collision that results when extreme rationalism confronts unrestrained passion. Closed and hierarchically structured institutions -- familial and communal -- become arenas of explosive confrontation.
