Peace-in-Arrears: Sacrifice, Memory, and Order in Sophocles’ <i>Antigone </i>and Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”

This paper argues that peace—whether civic or geopolitical—is financed by sacrifice and accrues interest in memory. Through a paired close reading of Sophocles’ Antigone and Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”, we theorize a three-stage economy of sacrifice: the forfeiture of joy, affection, and finally the self. The paper contributes: 1) a reframing of Antigone’s burial as liturgical correction rather than mere defiance; 2) a reading of Komunyakaa’s speaker as an unwilling conduit, wherein survival functions as protracted martyrdom under racialized optics; and 3) the concept of peace-in-arrears to name how the costs of concord migrate from public edict to private nerve. We conclude by extending the analysis to various other writers, including Shakespeare, Fanon, and Du Bois, and situate it in the context of the classical–contemporary relay.