“He’s honoring one with a full funeral and treating the other one disgracefully!”(Line’s 26-27) Antigone is opposed to her uncle Creon unlike his pointless actions. Antigone is sallow, withdrawn, and recalcitrant. Creon is powerfully built, but a weary man who suffers the burdens the rule. Antigone and him don’t have a good bond nor do they like each other because of his personality. He tells Antigone that he’s only interested in his political and social order. Creon is simplicity.
Antigone’s words, actions and ideas contrast with Creon’s characters to the point of these two characters having conflicting motivations. These Conflicting motivations cause the characteristics of abomination, discourteous, and egocentric to be highlighted within Creon’s character. Ultimately, these conflicting motivations develop Creon a tragic hero by his downfalls, how he’s been aggressive, and also when Haemon and Antigone killed their selves.
Antigone’s words, actions, and ideas contrast with Creon’s character by his downfall because of Antigone braying her brother, Polyneices. Antigone said, “Let that be your excuse. I’m going now to make a burial mound for my dear brother.”(Line’s 99-100) Antigone is the type of person who thinks if one can get buried than the other deserves to be buried right along
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He doesn’t believe in any gods. He lost control of his own self. He was selfish and didn’t care about nobody or their feelings. A tragic hero also has some type of flaw. Creon is a tragic hero because of his hatred journey he took. Creon, as king of Thebes, is at the top of the social leader. He’s not only king, he is also possessed frailty, which qualify him to make some major mistakes. He was aggressive and mean at the beginning. Towards the end he feels empty and a mad sad mood. He didn’t think that they both would commit suicide. This is how Antigone contrasts Creon into a tragic
The first specification for the tragic hero is one of the few that both Antigone and Creon exhibit; both characters are between the extremes of perfect morality and pure villainy. Antigone’s moral neutrality is illustrated through her noble intentions and the unorthodox way she acts upon them. When she is confronted by Creon and demanded to give an explanation for her disobedience, Antigone says, “For me it was not Zeus who made that order. Nor did that Justice who lives with the gods below mark out such laws to hold among mankind” (Sophocles 207 ll. 450-2). Along with love and loyalty to her brother, Antigone is largely motivated by her desire for justice and appeasement of the gods. While her intentions are noble, Antigone’s actions in the
Second, Creon’s faults brought an endless life of pain upon himself. He carried an easily describable tragic flaw. Of course, this defect is a vital trait of the tragic hero of any work. Creon’s flaw was that he was stubborn. I could not reason what Antigone’s tragic flaw could be. I believe that if Sophocles wanted Antigone to be the tragic heroine, he would have stated it more clearly in the story. I am convinced that she was simply a victim of Creon’s stubbornness, therefore leading her away from the role of the tragic heroine. I would simply consider her as a type of “puppet” character that Sophocles ingenuously used to emphasize Creon’s flaw. Creon’s defect brings misery to his life, for that his stubbornness indirectly kills Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice. This, of course, fits the definition of a tragic hero. This can be easily reasoned by simply reading the work.
Throughout the story, both Antigone and Creon are symbols of the theme of pride and power that is shown throughout the story. In Antigone, the theme of pride affects the plot because if Creon was self-less rather than being prideful, he would have understood Antigone’s following of the unwritten laws and accept her feelings, which would prevent her suicide. In conclusion, while there are multiple themes that appear throughout the play, pride and power are both the most
In the Greek tragedy Antigone, the characters Antigone and Creon can both be thought of as the tragic hero of the play. Though Antigone does show some of these characteristics of a tragic hero, Creon demonstrates the attributes more clearly and concisely. Creon is the King of Thebes, as well as the uncle of Antigone. Creon took the throne after a tragic quarrel between his two nephews, Eteocles and Polyneices. Despite his harsh governing and his crude ideals, he is not good or bad. Creon is the tragic hero of the play Antigone, because of his superiority in his society, his nobility, and his tragic flaw, self-pride.
Even though Antigone exhibits a blamable pride and a hunger for glory, her disobedience is less serious than those of Creon. It is evident that Antigone’s actions are driven by a love for her brother, and a desire to please the gods. While Creon’s actions are
Every Greek tragedy must have a tragic hero. In Sophocle’s play, Antigone, the most tragic hero is Creon. He is an essentially good man of high position who takes pride in his role as king. He possesses the tragic flaws of excessive pride and an oversized ego. This causes the tragic reversal that leads to his emotional ruin and eventual remorse and repentance.
Sophocles symbolizes family over authority by using Antigone and Creon to conflict each other's core beliefs, showing that Antigone is willing to die to honor the love for her family, while Creon is willing to kill to honor and enforce his own authority at any cost. As we see in the story, when Antigone's brothers die, she chooses to bury Polyneices even though she knows this will cost her her life. In the play when Antigone tells her sister what she’s going to do, ismene says, ”But think of the danger! Think what Creon will do! ANTIGONE: Creon is not enough to stand in my way” This shows Antigone represents family for the great lengths she will go to to honor her brother. By contrast, Sophocles paints Creon to symbolize authority through murder of his own bloodline. In the play he plans to kill Antigone for choosing her love for her brother over his rule, and so he plans out her execution although she is family to Creon. The Choragos asks Creon “Do you really intend to steal this girl from your son?,” which then he responds by saying “No; Death will do that for me.” Which shows the reader that Creon is unsympathetic to who Antigone is in relation to him. He disregards the importance of family to uphold his authoritative values. By the end of the play the author has shown us Creon has come to realize his ways have cost him his family, and he regrets his decisions.
A stubborn man may rule the land, but what's in the hearts of his people will shift what's in his beloved’s hands. King Creon’s ego will be overturned when his family’s lives begin to diminish all for his own selfishness when justifying laws. As seen in Antigone by Sophocles, King Creon is a tragic figure that through his own stubbornness and pride, he promotes the suffering of not only his son, Haemon, but as well as Antigone herself, which shapes Creon’s character development and will function as a platform for the play’s tragedy to unveil . A tragedy is more than deaths and suffering, it's at the moment where one realizes that everything they've done has further doomed themselves.
In the Antigone, unlike the Oedipus Tyrannus, paradoxically, the hero who is left in agony at the end of the play is not the title role. Instead King Creon, the newly appointed and tyrannical ruler, is left all alone in his empty palace with his wife's corpse in his hands, having just seen the suicide of his son. However, despite this pitiable fate for the character, his actions and behavior earlier in the play leave the final scene evoking more satisfaction than pity at his torment. The way the martyr Antigone went against the King and the city of Thebes was not entirely honorable or without ulterior motives of fulfilling pious concerns but it is difficult to lose sight of the fact
This play is ultimately concerned with one person defying another person and paying the price. Antigone went against the law of the land, set by the newly crowned King Creon. Antigone was passionate about doing right by her brother and burying him according to her religious beliefs even though Creon deemed him a traitor and ordered him to be left for the animals to devour. Creon was passionate about being king and making his mark from his new throne. Although they differed in their views, the passion Creon and Antigone shared for those opinions was the same, they were equally passionate about their opposing views. Creon would have found it very difficult to see that he had anything in common with Antigone however as he appears to be
“Take me and kill me, what more do you want”(565) “there’s nothing in your words that I enjoy may that always be the case”(567-568) Antigone tells Creon. The conflict between Antigone and Creon cause the characteristics of anger,disrespect, and stubbornness to show up in Creon throughout the play. Only Antigone brings this out in him through her actions,ideas, and words. Overall these conflict motivations make Creon a tragic hero by him thinking he knows what’s best and only following the rules of man and ultimately killing his son and wife. The character interactions advance the plot because both antigone and Creon have such a strong perspective on what they think is right that he causes them to equally make decisions based on their thought of what’s good and what’s not
A tragedy, as defined by Ms. Tozar, is “the story of a falling from a high place to a lower place by a character.” In other words, a tragedy is a story of an individual who starts in a high position and descends throughout the story to end in a position that is lower than original position. The individual who makes the descent is known as the tragic hero. The tragic hero, as defined by Ms. Tozar, is “the character who falls from grace as a result of fate and/or a weakness. In the drama, Antigone by Sophocles, one could argue that there are many tragic heroes. However, the one who stands above them all is that of the character of Creon. Creon is understood by most as the tragic hero in Antigone as evident in his
This essay will compare two of the characters in “Antigone”, Antigone and Creon, in an effort to determine the identity of the tragic hero in this tale.
Throughout the play, whenever these two characters are interacting with each other, it is like fire coming in contact with gasoline. Readers are able to sense the tension between them. It is apparent that one of the main issues these two have with each other are differences in views. From the beginning, readers can tell that family plays a significant role in Antigone’s life. Antigone’s brother had been killed in a war and due to the side he was fighting on; he was considered a traitor towards Thebes. Because of this, Creon has made the act of burying his body illegally. Antigone tells her sister hat she wants to defy the laws of her homeland and give her brother the proper burial that she feels he deserves. She even states, “I’ll bury him myself. And
Throughout the context words of Creon and Antigone contrasts their perspective on their belief. Creon would often decide all the rulings of his country with no hesitant because of his strong pride being a King. On the other hand, Antigone’s strong bond, love for her family, commitment to bury her brother which objects the rule against Creon. In disobedience towards Creon, Antigone says her “...honours for the dead must last much longer than for those up here” (Sophocles, 275), as well as speaking that “there’s nothing shameful in honouring my mother’s children.” (Sophocles, 273). Antigone’s words expresses her love and the