What does the Chorus anticipate about Antigone's future in saying 'Look now at the last sunlight that sustains the one surviving root of Oedipus' tree The sword of death is drawn to hack it down'?

Answer 1

Antigone's death inside a remote, walled up cave and the end of the curse on the House of Labdacus are what the Chorus anticipates in saying 'Look now at the last sunlight that sustains the one surviving root of Oedipus' tree. The sword of death is drawn to hack it down'.

Being walled up is anticipated by the reference to the last possibility of seeing the sun. Antigone indeed ends up, all alone, in darkness and isolation behind a walled up entrance to a cave.

Dying inside the cave is anticipated by the reference to being hacked down. Antigone indeed decides to take her life once inside her dark, lonely prison cell.

Ending the curse that passes from Labdacus down to Oedipus is anticipated by Antigone being described as the 'one surviving root of Oedipus' tree'. The chorus may or may not be correct here in their assessment. Antigone may or may not be Oedipus' only surviving child. The fate of her sister Ismene isn't known.

But the fates of Antigone's nephews, and Oedipus' grandchildren, are known. Oedipus' twin sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, have sons. If the curse on the House of Labadacus ends with Antigone, then Oedipus revives it or starts up another. He curses his sons, who end up killing each other. Whatever the source of the curse, be it from Oedipus or the gods, the curse ultimately ends with Eteocles' son Laodamas losing his life and his job as King of Thebes. In contrast, Polyneices' son Thersander takes over the Theban throne, and gains a good name for himself and his descendants.