Towering over the rest of greek tragedy, these three plays are among the most enduring and timeless dramas ever written. Robert Fagles' translation conveys all of Sophocles' lucidity and power: the cut and thrust of his dialogue, his ironic edge, the surge and majesty of choruses and, above all, the agonies and triumphs of his characters.

"I know of no better modern English version." -Sir Hugh Llyod-Jones, Oxford University

کتاب شامل سه نمایشنامه معروف از سوفوکلس است که به نام (نمایشنامه‌های تبای) معروف است، ادیپ شاه، ادیپ در کلونوس و آنتیکونه.
هر سه نمایشنامه و مخصوصاً ادیپ شاه و انتیگونه شهرتی جهانی دارند، در طی سال‌ها اقتباس‌های زیادی از آنها شده و حتی انگیزه‌ای برای نویسنده‌ها و داستان‌های پس از خود.
تمام داستان‌ها پیرامون سه مسئله می‌گذرد، اختیار و تقدیر، دانستن و رنج بردن، عشق و منطق که سوفوکسل به زیبایی فضایی پارادوکسیکال خلق کرده و در پایان از قضاوت خودداری کرده و فقط خواننده را با بار فشار داستان تنها گذاشته
ترجمه شاهرخ مسکوب، کمی سنگین و ادبی است و بسیار مناسب نثر آهنگین کتاب و به نظر من یک ترجمه هنری و عالی برای چنین اثری است.

Alternate title: in which everyone stabs or hangs themselves.

Seriously, this book features a hell of a lot of suicide. And I get it - finding out that you've been banging your son for the past 15-20 years can't be a pleasant experience. But this just ended up feeling repetitive to me.

The biggest problem with this one for me, I suspect, is that all the action in the story takes place off stage. And I totally understand why that's the case, but it means that all the reader/viewer gets is recaps of what's been happening off stage, and frankly? It dragged.

Antigone was probably the most interesting of the three plays for me, but even that wasn't the most fascinating subject matter. So I appreciate them for their historical merit and value. But I won't be rereading them in a hurry.

کتاب خیلی عالی و فوق العاده بود.
از کتابهایی که سخت میشد زمین گذاشت. متن بسیار روان بود.مضامین و مفاهیمش هم علی رغم اینکه متن حدود دوهزار سال قبل نویسانده شده، بسیار ناب و دست اولند.

از سه بخش تشکیل شده کتاب.
بخش اول مواجهه ادیپوس به سرنوشت و تقدیری که از آن فراری بود.
بخش دوم مرگ ادیپوس و بخش سوم کشته شدن آنتیگنه.

خمیر مایه اصلی داستان فرار از تقدیر انسانیهو ادیپوس پیشگویی معبد دلفی در مورد سرنوشت شوم خودش رو میدونه. و هرچه که سعی میکنه که ازش فرار کنه، ناگهان در لحظه‌ای که نفس راحتی میکشه، با کنجکاوی بسیار برای کشف راز تولد خویش باعث آشکار شدن رازی کثیف میشه.

شخصیت های داستان بیش از حد مغرورند. و در قبول حقیقتی که در مقابله با اونها قرار میگیره سرسختی نشون میدند. گذشته رو بسیار سخت فراموش میکنند.

با فضای داستان:
ما با تقدیر مواجه میشیم. ولی نحوه ای که با اون مواجه میشیم دست خودمونه.ادیپوس به حتم اگر میدونست چنین پلیدی ها رو انجام نمیداد. و من خدایان رو در این ماجرا مقصر میدونم.

بیشتر ترجیح میدم در مورد کتاب حرف بزنم تا بنویسم.

با سپاس و تشکر فراوان از بانو اسماء که این کتاب خیلی خوب رو به من امانت داد:))

The three plays in which Sophocles sets forth the unhappy fate of Oedipus and his descendants are characterized by profound dramatic compression and unfailingly incisive insights into human character. And as presented for modern audiences by the renowned translator Robert Fagles, the plays Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone speak to modern audiences with the same power that they possessed when they were originally staged at Athens’ Theatre of Dionysus in the 5th century B.C.

Aside from inspiring Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of the “Oedipus complex,” Oedipus the King is a classical tragedy that also works as the world’s first detective story. Oedipus, king of Thebes, has been a hero to his people ever since he ended the monstrous Sphinx’s hold over the city by solving the Sphinx’s riddle. According to Apollodorus, the dialogue (not included in Sophocles' play) went something like this:

SPHINX: Which creature has one voice, and yet becomes four-footed, and then two-footed, and then three-footed?
OEDIPUS: Man -- who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age.
SPHINX: [throws herself from top of high hill to her death]

Now, many years later, the city of Thebes is afflicted by plague; and in response to the Theban people’s pleas for help, King Oedipus has sent Creon, the brother of his wife Jocasta, to ask Apollo’s oracle at Delphi why the city is cursed with plague. Creon returns from Delphi with the oracle’s verdict: the city is polluted. The murderer of Oedipus’ predecessor Laius still lives in Thebes, the oracle says, and must be expelled before Thebes can be freed from the plague.

Small wonder that, in 429 B.C. when the play is thought to have premiered, plague was on Sophocles’ mind, and on the minds of the Athenian people generally. Two years before, the Peloponnesian War between Athens had begun. The war’s first year had ended with a devastating plague outbreak; among the bubonic illness’s many victims was Pericles, the city’s wise and eloquent leader. It is more than understandable that Sophocles and his audience would both be drawn to a story about people seeking leadership in the midst of a devastating outbreak of plague.

Oedipus, a man of action, begins seeking information regarding the murderer of Laius, and, in a moment of supreme dramatic irony, pronounces a grim curse against the unknown killer: “Whoever he is…let that man drag out/his life in agony, step by painful step -- /I curse myself as well…if by any chance/he proves to be an intimate of our house,/here at my hearth, with my full knowledge,/may the curse I just called down on him strike me!” (p. 172). Oedipus has no idea that he has just condemned himself.

At the suggestion of a leading Theban citizen (the choragos or choral leader for the play), Oedipus summons the blind prophet Tiresias. When Tiresias is reluctant to speak, Oedipus loses his temper, mocks Tiresias for being blind, and accuses Tiresias of plotting to help seize power. Tiresias, getting angry himself, makes a fateful statement in response: “So,/you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this./You with your precious eyes,/you’re blind to the corruption of your life….All unknowing/you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood…and the double lash of your mother and your father’s curse/will whip you from this land one day…darkness shrouding/your eyes that now can see the light!” (p. 183) The whole play is filled with this sort of dramatic irony.

Oedipus comes to seem more and more unbalanced, accusing Creon, without evidence, of seeking to usurp the throne of Thebes. Oedipus’ wife, the queen Jocasta, intervenes, and tries to reassure Oedipus, telling him that “An oracle came to Laius one fine day…and it declared/that doom would strike him down at the hands of a son,/our son, to be born of our own flesh and blood. But Laius…was killed by strangers,/thieves, at a place where three roads meet” (p. 201). Jocasta’s words, meant to reassure Oedipus, only make him more afraid; for he once killed a man after a quarrel at a place where three roads meet.

Oedipus also reveals that in Corinth, where he grew up as the son of King Polybus and his wife Merope, he was told at a feast by a drunken guest that he was not his father’s son. Troubled by the accusation, Oedipus traveled to Delphi to consult the oracle, and heard the following dreadful prophecy: “You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring/a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see -- /you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!” (p. 205) Oedipus fled Corinth that day, determined to avoid the dreadful prophecy; his path took him toward Thebes, where he overcame the Sphinx and won the hand of Jocasta. He starts to sense that, in trying to flee his fate, he has raced towards it.

Jocasta has heard the same prophecies; and while they wait for the shepherd who was assigned to kill the baby child of Jocasta and Laius, she tells her own story of terrifying prophecy: “Apollo was explicit:/my son was doomed to kill my husband…my son,/poor defenseless thing, he never had a chance/to kill his father. They destroyed him first” (p. 208).

A messenger from Corinth brings what seems like news that would make the curse moot: King Polybus has died. But the messenger also reveals that many years ago, he gave the baby Oedipus to Polybus, having accepted the baby from another shepherd. And, sure enough, that other shepherd, now an old man, once he has been brought to court and threatened with torture, reveals that he took a baby from Jocasta, under orders to kill the child; but he could not bring himself to do so, and therefore he gave the baby to the messenger.

Through this backwards-in-time progression, gathering evidence from Creon and Tiresias and Jocasta and the messenger and the shepherd, Oedipus has confirmed that he murdered his father and married his mother. He blinds himself and sends himself into exile, and the choragos, echoing the Athenian lawgiver Solon, cautions the audience that one should “count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last” (p. 251).

Oedipus at Colonus is, of these plays, the one that most often goes unread, but it provides a helpful link between the events of Oedipus the King and Antigone. The blind Oedipus, cast out of Thebes by his own sons Eteocles and Polyneices, has wandered the world as a blind beggar for years. Accompanied by his daughter Antigone, he has now arrived at the grove of the Furies at Colonus. The legendary hero-king Theseus of Athens, who (unsurprisingly) is usually depicted quite sympathetically in Athenian drama, offers welcome and refuge to Oedipus. Moved by Theseus’ kindness, Oedipus reflects, “Oh Theseus,/dear friend, only the gods can never age,/the gods can never die. All else in the world/almighty Time obliterates, crushes all/to nothing” (p. 322). The Athenian audience of the time would no doubt have detected the new note of humility in the once arrogant Oedipus.

Creon, angling to take over the rule of Thebes, pretends to sympathize with Oedipus but in fact keeps trying to solidify his power, seeking to make off with Oedipus’ daughters Ismene and Antigone. Theseus is having none of that, telling Creon, “You have come to a city that practices justice,/that sanctions nothing without law” (p. 341). Creon insolently responds that he had thought better of the Athenians, that “they’d never harbor a father-killer…worse,/a creature so corrupt, exposed as the mate,/the unholy husband of his own mother” (p. 343). Quick to judge, never able to let go of the past, Creon will face his own comeuppance in time.

Meanwhile, Oedipus’ sons Eteocles and Polyneices, once ruling Thebes together, have had a falling-out; Eteocles has become sole king, and has sent Polyneices into exile. Polyneices seeks out his estranged father and begs Oedipus to relent in his curse against his sons, pointing out that, now that Polyneices is himself an exile, “We share the same fate” (p. 363). But Oedipus rejects his faithless son, becoming a bit of a Teiresias-style prophet himself when he prophecies that Eteocles and Polyneices, brothers turned enemies, will kill one another when Polyneices raises an army of Argive mercenaries and makes war against Thebes: “Die!/Die by your own blood brother’s hand – die! – /killing the very man who drove you out” (p. 363).

Clearly, Oedipus still has much of his old spirit; but it seems that time and suffering have taken away much of his former arrogance, leaving a humbler man with what an Athenian audience of the time would have regarded as a proper reverence for the gods. Accordingly, he is granted the sort of apotheosis characteristic of a hero’s destiny: a messenger reports that when Theseus accompanied Oedipus to the place where everyone thought Oedipus would die, “we turned/in a moment, looked back, and Oedipus – /we couldn’t see the man – he was gone – nowhere!” (p. 381). Theseus indicates that he will keep forever the secret of the place from which Oedipus departed this world, stating that Oedipus told him “that if I kept my pledge/I’d keep my country free of harm forever” (p. 388). Oedipus at Colonus ends on a note of foreboding, as Antigone and Ismene leave Colonus for Thebes, hoping against hope that they can keep their brothers Eteocles and Polyneices from plunging the Theban people into all the horrors of civil war.

Antigone shows a woman’s strength under the most difficult circumstances imaginable; accordingly, it may have been the most challenging, of all these plays, for Sophocles’ original Athenian audiences, with their unexamined assumptions regarding male domination in their society. By the time of the play’s beginning, the attempts of Antigone and her sister to prevent civil war have proven unavailing; the Theban civil war has already taken place. Polyneices’ rebel army of Argive mercenaries, led by the “Seven Against Thebes,” has been defeated, and the warring brothers Eteocles and Polyneices have killed one another in battle.

Creon now rules as king of Thebes, and he has ordained that, while Eteocles is to receive an honourable burial as a man who defended his city, Polyneices’ body is to be left out on the plain, to rot and be eaten by animals – a terrible profanation, and an offence against the gods. The Chorus of Theban elders express the Athenian audience’s likely sensibilities at Creon’s cruel and impious act when they declare that “Numberless wonders/terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man” (p. 76).

It soon emerges that someone has performed the customary burial ceremonies over the exposed body of Polyneices; Creon is outraged by this open defiance of his royal command. Antigone, caught by sentries performing the rituals, readily admits to what she has done, citing as her reason for disobeying Creon’s directive her adherence to higher, divine laws: “These laws – I was not about to break them,/not out of fear of some man’s wounded pride,/and face the retribution of the gods” (p. 82). Creon orders Antigone’s execution and that of her sister Ismene, but Antigone scornfully rejects Ismene’s wish to share her sister’s fate, as the fearful Ismene refused to join with Antigone in performing the burial ceremonies over the body of Polyneices.

Creon’s son Haemon, betrothed to Antigone, pleads for the life of his fiancée, but in vain; Creon ordains that Antigone shall be buried alive, put into a tomb under the earth. The blind prophet Teiresias calls upon Creon to turn from his destructive and impious path, pointing out the unnatural, morally inverted quality of Creon’s actions: “[Y]ou have thrust/to the world below a child sprung for the world above,/ruthlessly lodged a living soul within the grave – /then you’ve robbed the gods below the earth,/keeping a dead body here in the bright air,/unburied, unsung, unhallowed by the rites” (p. 115).

Creon at first remains stubborn, accusing Teiresias of taking bribes and being a prophet-for-hire; Teiresias angrily tells Creon that the Furies are ready “to strike you down with the pains that you perfected!” (p. 115). Once Teiresias has gone, Creon finally rethinks his prideful ways and resolves to set Antigone free. But his change of heart comes too late: the despairing Antigone has killed herself. Haemon, finding his beloved dead in the tomb, first raises his hand in anger against his father but then turns his anger against himself, taking his own life and joining Antigone in death. Creon’s wife Eurydice, hearing of the death of her beloved son, likewise commits suicide. Creon, lamenting his fatal pride – “Ohhh, so senseless, so insane…my crimes,/my stubborn, deadly --” (p. 124) -- is left an empty shell of a man, longing for death. It is left to the Chorus to sum up a key theme not just of Antigone, but of the Theban trilogy generally:

“Wisdom is by far the greatest part of joy,
And reverence toward the gods must be safeguarded.
The mighty words of the proud are paid in full
with mighty blows of fate, and at long last
Those blows will teach us wisdom.” (p. 128)

The grim trilogy sets forth with particular force the ancient Greek idea that hubris (fatal pride) can lead to hamartia, the fatal action that causes one to fall from greatness. As set forth in poetic modern English by the great translator Robert Fagles of Princeton University, with a helpful introduction and notes by Bernard Knox from Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, this Penguin Books edition of Sophocles’ Theban plays is a great way to get to know one of the most important dramatic trilogies ever written.

Sadness seems to be a constant presence in my reading life these days. The didacticism and the role fate plays in Greek tragedies, I thought, were not my forte, but sylphs are the proof, how deeply I am in love with them now. The Theban Plays has been a great start for Greek tragedies. The helplessness and the doomed lives consistently made their presence felt.

The Theban Plays is essentially a collection of three plays by Sophocles: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (sequentially). When I started reading the plays, with the help of a background of Greek theatre that I had, I was transported to Sophocles' time. I was one of the audiences in Dionysia and by Jove, it was the best reading experience for me as far as reading a play is concerned. Perhaps this is the reason why a background study is so important. It adds on to our reading experience.

Coming back to the plays, in Greek tragedies, fate plays a very important role. If an oracle tells that a person is doomed, no power in the world can rescue that person from his (her) fate. Action or no action, fate ultimately prevails, and human beings have no say in it. Similar is the case with Oedipus. An oracle tells that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Hence begins a journey that most of us are quite aware of.

دنیای تراژدی اُدیپوس، دنیای دوگانه ی ناهمساز خدایان و آدمیان است که هر یک قوانین خاص خود را دارند.از هم جدا و بیگانه اند و آنگاه که به هم برخورند، آدمیانند که باید به اراده ی خدایان سر فرود آورند. انسان سلاحی است که با آن ، خدایانِ دشمن خوی ، جان یکدیگر را زخمگین می کنند.
جهانی که ما در آن به سر میبریم، سرشار از خدایانِ ناسازگار است که با هم سر آشتی ندارند.چنین انسانی در چنین دنیای ناسازگاری نه تنها نمی تواند دور و مبرا از گناه به سر بَرد، بلکه با گناه همزاد است....
اُدیپوس چون از اراده ی شوم خدایان درمورد خودش آگاه میشود، به آن گردن نمی نهد و می کوشد تا خواست خود را به انجام رساند.اما تقدیر او جاندار، متحرک و آرام ناپذیر است و علیرغم تلاش ادیپوس برای فرار از آن، سرانجام تقدیر ضربه ی کاری خود را بر او وارد میکند...
بر درِ شهر تبای ، ابولهولِ بالداری است که خونخوار مردم تبای است ؛ بر سنگی نشسته و پرسشی سه گانه دارد.می پرسد: آن چیست که در بامداد چهارپای، در نیمروز دوپای و شامگاهان با سه پای میرود؟
این چیستانِ تقدیر است و جز ادیپوسِ رازگشا کسی از عهده ی حل آن برنمی آید.او پاسخ میدهد: جواب، انسان است در خُردی و جوانی و پیری... و ابولهول چون رازش گشوده می شود جان میسپارد و مردم شهر توسط ادیپوس از مصیبتی بزرگ میرهند...
افسانه ی ادیپوس به ما یادآور میشود که کسی را از پرسش ابوالهول گریز نیست.باید پاسخ را یافت. تقدیر آدمی در همین پرسش و پاسخ، در اندیشیدن به خویش، و شناخت خود است.ادیپوس نگاهِ آسمان کاوِ ما را با رمز و کنایه، از دنیای خدایان، به جهان باطن خودمان باز میگرداند و میگوید تقدیرتان را در اینجا بجویید...در وجود خود...هیچ کس چون او ما را به جنگ با تقدیر برنمی انگیزد و از این نظرگاه، پیروز ادیپوس است و مغلوب، تقدیر... چون او دست به نبردی زده که جرأتِ گیرو دار در آن، خود بزرگترین پیروزی است...

نثر زیبا و وزین شاهرخ مسکوب، لذت خوندنش رو چندین برابر کرد.

The plays and messages were excellent (I mean how can one go wrong with Sophocles?), but this translation took a nosedive with the last play Antigone. The slang and too modern language (i.e. "blockhead", "I won't take the rap") sounded like dissonant music to my ear. I had to pull out my 1967 Penguin Classic edition from H.S. days to finish this last play. In HS we only read Oedipus Rex, so the Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone were fresh reads for me. If you are looking for a review that discusses the story or a scholarly treatise, you'll have to look elsewhere; there are plenty by better writers than I.
I did have one niggle, as the plays presented in the trilogy are not presented in their chronologically written order, so do I assume the story of Oedipus was already well known to the citizens before Antigone was staged as a play as it already refers to the curse of the house of Oedipus as a few other actions from the other plays.
I also seemed to have missed why Oedipus after unknowingly fulfilling the tragic prophecy from his birth, exiling and blinding himself, yet still showed the same hubris from Oedipus Rex in Oedipus at Colonus, was allowed a death that was near divine.
Antigone was definitely my favorite character and my hats off to Sophocles for developing a strong female character in a male dominated mortal world.

بنگريد، فرزندان تباي
اين اديپوس
بزرگتر مردان و رازگشاي ژرفترين معماها بود
و بهروزي تابناكش محسود همگان
بنگريد كه چگونه در گرداب تيره بختي غوطه ور است.

پس بدانيد كه انسان فاني بايد هميشه فرجام را بنگرد و هيچكس را نمي توان سعادتمند دانست مگر آنگاه كه قرين سعادت در گور بيارمد.

42. Sophocles I : Oedipus The King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone (The Complete Greek Tragedies)
published: 1954 (my copy is a 33rd printing from 1989)
format: 206 page Paperback
acquired: May 30 from a Half-Price Books
read: July 3-4
rating: 4½

Each play had a different translator

- n  Oedipus the Kingn (circa 429 bce) - translated by David Grene c1942
- n  Oedipus at Colonusn (written by 406 bce, performed 401 bce) - translated by Robert Fitzgerald c1941
- n  Antigonen (by 441 bce) - translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff c1954

Greek tragedy can fun. After all those rigid Aeschylus plays, that is the lesson of Sophocles. The drama within the dialogue is always dynamic, and sometimes really terrific. I had to really get in the mood to enjoy reading a play by Aeschylus, otherwise I might be bored by the long dull choral dialogues. These three plays are all different and all from different points in Sophocles career, but they each drew me on their own.

Although they are all on the same story line, they were not written together, or in story order. Antigone was first, and was written when Sophocles was still trying to make a name for himself (vs Aeschylus). Oedipus the King came next, when Sophocles was well established. Oedipus at Colonus was apparently written just before Sophocles death, at about age 90. It wasn't performed until several years after his death. All this seems to show in the plays. Antigone having the sense of an author trying to make a striking impression. Oedipus the King carrying the sense of a master playwright with it's dramatic set ups. Oedipus at Colonus is slower, and more reflective. And two of the main characters are elderly.

n  Oedipus the Kingn

This is simply a striking play, from the opening lines. In line 8, Oedipus characterizes himself to children suppliants as "I Oedipus who all men call the Great." It shows his confidence, but, as Thebes is in the midst of a suffering famine, it also shows outrageous arrogance - it's the only clear sing of this in the play. He is otherwise a noble character throughout. Of course he doesn't know what's coming. In the course of the play he will learn, slowly, his own tragic story - that a man he had killed in a highway fight was his father, and that his wife, and mother of his four children is also his own mother. As each person resists giving him yet another dreadful piece of information, he gets angry at them, threatening them in disbelief at their hesitancy. His denial lasts longer than that of Jocasta, his mother/wife, who leaves the play in dramatic fashion herself, first trying to stop the information flow, and then giving Oedipus a cryptic goodbye. And even as his awareness gets worse and worse, he cannot step out of character, the show-off i-do-everything-right ruler, but must continue to pursue the truth to it bitter fullness.

n  Oedipus at Colonusn

A mature play in many ways. It's slow, thoughtful, has much ambiguity, and has many touching moments. The opening scene is memorable, where a blind Oedipus moves through the wilderness only with the close guidance of his daughter, Antigone.

...

Who will be kind to Oedipus this evening
And give the wanderer charity?

Though he ask little and receive still less,
It is sufficient:

                                          Suffering and time,
Vast time, have been instructors in contentment,
Which kingliness teaches too.

                                          But now, child,
If you can see a place we might rest,

...

It's interesting to see Creon, Jocasta's brother, turn bad. But it's more interesting to see Oedipus have a bitter side to him. He maintains his noble character, and that is the point of the play—he is hero because he never did anything bad intentionally, and yet he bears full punishment. But he also makes some interesting calls, essentially setting up a future war between his Thebes and Athens. And, Antigone is striking too. She saves Oedipus critically several times through her advice or her speech. While sacrificing herself and maintaining real affection for Oedipus, she is also shrewd, stepping forward boldly and changing the atmosphere.

n  Antigonen

This play takes place immediately after what Aeschylus covered in The Seven Against Thebes. Polyneices has attacked Thebes with his Argive army, and been repulsed by his brother Eteocles. Both are sons of Oedipus and they have killed each other in the battle. Creon is now ruler. He is a stiff ruler. Despite much warning, he refuses to listen to popular opinion, instead threatening it to silence (a clear political point is being made). But the problems start when he refuses to give his attacker Polyneices a proper burial. He threatens death on anyone who does try to bury him. Antigone openly defies this rule, setting up the play's drama. It's an extreme tragedy with a hamlet-like ending where practically everyone dies. I felt there was less here than in the other two plays, but yet there is still a lot. And it's still fun.

Overall

I don't imagine citizens of Thebes liked these plays. There is an unspoken sense of noble Athen poking fun its neighbor throughout. But, as it's not Athens, they give the playwright freedom to work in otherwise dangerous political points - and those are clearly there. But, mostly, these were fun plays. They don't need to be read as a trilogy. They were not meant that way, despite the plot-consistency. Each is independent. There are four more plays by Sophocles. I'm actually going to save them and start Euripides next. Because I think Sophocles is something to look forward to and that might push me through the next bunch.

King Oedipus' sons Eteocles and Polynices agree to share the throne of Thebes after their father's death. Initially, the brothers plan to alternate years, but after Eteocles' first year in power he refuses to give up the throne. This causes a civil war.
When Act I begins, the civil war is already over. Both brothers are dead, and their sisters, Antigone and Ismene, are in mourning. Their uncle Creon has assumed control of Thebes.
While Antigone is awaiting execution, the blind prophet Tiresias informs Creon that he has angered the gods. Creon decides to release Antigone, only to discover that she has committed suicide.