Family Tragedy in Sophocles' Antigone

In the Greek tragedy, Antigone, the Royal House of Thebes has already suffered a tremendous breakdown. King Oedipus, after discovering that he had murdered his father and married his own mother, gouged out his eyes, then died while in exile, accompanied only by his two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. His two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, killed each other in a battle over Thebes. These tragic events occur before the start of Antigone, but they have an enormous influence on the outcome of the play's actions. The shifting lines of loyalty and obligations in the play occur because the family unit, which has been weakened and destroyed by the earlier events, no longer provides the stability and bond in which the characters can direct those loyalties. Therefore, individual desires toward self-preservation, eros, and power further the destruction of the family unit to its inevitable and tragic end.