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150 multiple-choice questions and 45 flashcards, written to the AP English Literature blueprint. Every question carries a full rationale.
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AP English Literature, Common Core ELA 9-12 reading drama, IB English A: Literature
CoStudy's Antigone (Sophocles) bank holds 195 items. Every multiple-choice question carries a written rationale explaining why the correct answer is correct and why each distractor is tempting but wrong.
A sample of 12 multiple-choice questions from the bank, with the full rationale shown.
Antigone's refusal of Ismene's offer to share blame is best read as:
Answer: C — Her insistence that only the one who acted should bear the act, preserving the meaning of her choice
A/B/D) Misread the speech. C) Correct — she protects the integrity of the deed itself.
Leadership as a theme is dramatized in:
Answer: D — Creon's repeated identification of the city with himself and his refusal to take counsel
A/B/C) Wrong. D) Correct — Haemon's warning that no city belongs to one man is the diagnosis.
A late-recognition tragedy is one in which:
Answer: B — The protagonist comes to understanding only after catastrophe is irreversible
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — Antigone is the type-case for many later readings.
Haemon's death is dramatized as:
Answer: C — Almost a parricide that becomes a suicide, performed at his fiancee's body
A/B/D) Wrong. C) Correct — the missed sword stroke at his father turns inward, fusing rage and grief.
A common misconception is that Antigone is the unambiguous hero of the play. The play actually:
Answer: D — Shows her as right in cause and tragic in zeal, refusing solidarity and embracing death
A/B/C) Wrong. D) Correct — being right and being tragic are not mutually exclusive in Sophocles.
The theme of time and timing is dramatized in:
Answer: D — Creon's reversal coming exactly too late to save Antigone or Haemon
A/B/C) Wrong. D) Correct — Sophoclean tragic timing is the engine of the play's last act.
In the order it was written, Antigone is:
Answer: B — Before Oedipus Rex (despite being set after it in story-time)
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — Antigone (c. 441) was written before Oedipus Rex (c. 429). Treat the trilogy as autonomous plays.
When questioned by Creon, Antigone:
Answer: A — Openly admits the act and refuses to call it a crime
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — her open avowal is what makes Creon's edict and her sentence inevitable.
Antigone's appeal at trial is to:
Answer: B — The unwritten + eternal law of the gods
A) The opposite. B) Correct — 'agrapta nomima,' the unwritten + eternal law. The play's central philosophical move.
Civil disobedience as a theme is dramatized when Antigone:
Answer: A — Knowingly violates a public law on grounds of higher obligation and accepts the penalty
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — the open avowal and acceptance of consequence is the disobedience pattern.
Creon's hubris is most precisely his:
Answer: B — Refusal to listen — to Haemon, the chorus, Teiresias
A/C/D) Reductive. B) Correct — refusal of counsel is Sophocles's careful diagnosis of how authority destroys itself.
Antigone has been invoked in twentieth- and twenty-first-century arguments about:
Answer: B — The right of families to bury those killed by state action, from disappeared persons to war casualties
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — the play's most enduring civic afterlife.
6 sample cards from the 45 in the bank.
Why does Antigone insist on burying him?
Unburied dead cannot enter Hades. Familial + religious duty + the unwritten 'agrapta nomima' of the gods outweigh Creon's edict.
Creon's reversal?
After insulting Teiresias, Creon panics + listens to the chorus. Decides to bury Polynices first + then free Antigone.
Creon's sentence?
To bury Antigone alive in a sealed stone tomb. Avoids the religious pollution of a direct execution.
The first burial?
Antigone sprinkles dust on Polynices in secret. Guards uncover the body + report to Creon. Sentry returns terrified.
Theme: family vs. state.
Antigone speaks for blood, the dead, + the gods. Creon speaks for the city. Sophocles refuses to let either claim absorb the other.
Who is Creon?
Antigone's uncle, now king of Thebes after Eteocles + Polynices killed each other. Enforces his edict + becomes the play's tragic figure.
These samples are a small slice. The full bank runs flashcards, multiple choice and timed mock exams with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.
The Antigone (Sophocles) bank holds 195 items: 150 multiple-choice questions, 45 flashcards. 18 of them are on this page to read free, with no signup.
Yes. Every multiple-choice item carries a written rationale that states the controlling principle behind the correct answer and then addresses each wrong option in turn — why it tempts and precisely where it fails. Knowing why the plausible answer was wrong is worth more than knowing which letter was right.
The samples on this page are free to read in full, rationales included, with no account. The complete 195-item bank, the timed mock exams and per-chapter progress tracking are part of CoStudy on the web and in the iOS app.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Banks are written against the certifying body's published exam outline and re-checked when that outline changes — exams get renumbered, retired and reweighted, and a bank written to a superseded outline teaches the wrong proportions. Figures that are re-indexed annually are deliberately not asserted as rules; the questions test the governing principle instead.