Compare And Contrast Antigone And Creon

Antigone said “ I admit I did it. I won’t deny it.”(500) She disobeyed Creon’s law not to give Polyneices a proper burial for being a traitor.

Have you ever felt like you knew the honorable thing to do, but after doing it, you find that it just made things worse? In Sophocles’s play Antigone, both Antigone and Creon are great examples of a tragic hero who does exactly that. Both have similar weaknesses that lead to their own destruction. However, I believe that the best example of this role is Creon. He made a law to prevent Polyneices from having a burial because of his disloyalty to Thebes; consequently, this decree goes against the laws of the gods. This decision reveals Creon’s hamartia to be that he is too stubborn and narrow-minded for his own good. Moreover, due to this tragic flaw in his personality, he plants the seed that leads to his own downfall.

Sophocles’ play Antigone continues the calamitous story of the Theban royal family, recounting the conflict between Creon’s authority as king and Antigone’s sense of justice. While many of the events of the play are certainly tragic, whether or not Antigone and its characters should be considered tragic is less definite. Aristotle’s theory of a tragic hero calls for a basically good character who experiences a fall due to some flaw or error, experiencing a transformative realization and catharsis as a result. When considered together, the traits of both Antigone and Creon come together to fulfill all of the requirements for the play to be a tragedy, but neither character can be considered an Aristotelian tragic hero standing alone.

Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, the king that married his own mother, Locaste and unwittingly killed his father, Laios. When he learned what he had done, he blinded himself and left Thebes, voluntarily went into self-style exile and died over there. Antigone and Ismene are siblings, the only surviving children of Oedipus. The other two brothers Polyneices and Eteocles quarreled and killed each other in a battle when Polyneices returned to assault Thebes, then Creon, Antigone uncle became the king of Thebes being the only heir in line to the throne. Creon ordered Polyneices be left to rot unburied on the battle field as a traitor but Antigone could not see reason to let her brothers body rot unburied. Antigone

     In Sophocles’ play Antigone, Creon was engaged in a conflict with Oedipus’ daughter Antigone. Creon and Antigone did not see eye-to-eye the entire play due to extreme differences. Creon and Antigone had many similarities despite their enormous discrepancies. Having as many differences as they did, it made them uniquely similar in numerous ways. The similarities that Antigone and Creon shared were independence, loyalty toward their views, cruelty and arrogance (“The Similarities”). The connection shared by Antigone and Creon showed that as hard as Sophocles tried to make them diverse, he made them unintentionally equivalent at the same time.

In the Greek play Antigone writer Sophocles illustrates the clash between the story’s main character Antigone and her powerful uncle, Creon. King Creon of Thebes is an ignorant and oppressive ruler. In the text, there is a prevailing theme of rules and order in which Antigone’s standards of divine justice conflict with Creon’s will as the king. Antigone was not wrong in disobeying Creon, because he was evil and tyrannical. The authors of “Antigone: Kinship, Justice, and the Polis,” and “Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone.” agree with the notion that Antigone performs the role of woman and warrior at once. She does not only what a kinswoman would, but also what a warrior would do.

Antigone is a play written by Sophocles. The genre of the play that Sophocles wrote was based on tragedy. It is one of the first plays that use tragedy. In the play a young girl named Antigone, stands up against her uncle Creon who is the king. She stands up for her rights, so that she can give a religious burial to Polynices. She was a girl with a lot of will power. This essay talks about the relationship between Antigone and Creon. This essay would contain paragraphs where there would be comparisons between Antigone and Creon’s Relationship.

   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

The majority of Greek literature has one or more tragic or flawed characters. In the play, Antigone, Creon was the more tragic character, and Antigone had the greater downfall. In Antigone, the majority of the main characters have a tragic or fatal flaw. Creon and Antigone both had fatal flaws, which in the end led to their downfalls.

After reading Antigone by Sophocles, readers may believe that the two main characters, Antigone and Creon, seem like polar opposites. However, after digging a little deeper, readers are able to come to a final conclusion that although both characters may not always see eye to eye, they carry a number of similar traits. The characters seem to be so alike that it results in the two to constantly disagree, leading towards the two to continuously find new differences and flaws within each other. They don’t exactly have the same views, for example, Antigone seems to put family over everything else while Creon’s loyalty is more concerned with the well-being of Thebes. However, the two characters do have many similar internal characteristics. They are independent, confident, and stubborn when they want to be.

Task: Write an essay about the conflict between Antigone and Creon in Antigone, by Sophocles. Show how each is right in his or her own fundamental belief. Then show how the tragedy was inevitable or show how one side was wrong and should have changed.

John F. Kennedy once said “A man must do what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures...and that is the basis of human morality”. But when someone’s ambition is to do something wrong, how does their actions reflect on their morality? In the play Antigone by Sophocles, Antigone and King Creon’s decisions and choices reflect on their consequences and morality. One of the main characters in play, King Creon, makes some awful decisions that make him reflect on his own moral values. Another character, Antigone has a compulsive motive to bury her brother, Polynices, but she isn’t allowed to transgress the king’s command and despite the consequences she still attempts to bury Polyneices. Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan are two psychologists that created the Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development and Gilligan’s Ethics of Care Theory scales which show where one’s morality may rank depending on one’s actions. Even though Creon and Antigone started with the same circumstances and conditions, their morality causes them to stand on different levels and stages on Lawrence Kohlberg’s and Carol Gilligan’s scales and as well as on other Moral scales.

What is the difference between a tragic hero from an antagonist? In the story “Antigone”, written by famous play writer Sophocles, a young girl named Antigone fights a tragic battle in trying to prepare a proper funeral for her dead brother Polyneices. On the other hand Creon the King of Thebes, believes that Polyneices should be left unburied. The two conflicting characters Creon and Antigone differ based on their words, actions and ideas. Creon’s downfall slowly leads to more suffering even though he is just trying to follow the rules as a king. Creon’s traits of pride and ignorance are different from Antigone’s traits of perseverance lead to Creon’s position as a tragic hero because Creon can not accept the fact that Antigone is willing to do anything to have the burial for her brother and this leads to a series of tragic occurrences.

Antigone is a play that was written in ancient Greece by the playwright Sophocles. It is the third play in a trilogy of tragedies about the city-state of Thebes, revolving around Oedipus Rex. Antigone starts the day after a civil war fought between the two sons of Oedipus Rex after his death. The civil war ended in death for both brothers, so their uncle, Creon, assumed the role of King of Thebes. The main conflict of the play begins when Creon gives one brother, Eteocles, a burial with honors, but passes a law forbidding a burial for the other brother, Polyneices with the penalty of death. One of the sisters of Eteocles and Polyneices, Antigone disagrees with this law, and decides to bury Polyneices, resulting in Creon sentencing Antigone to death. A conflict emerges between Antigone and Creon, who appear to be opposites. However, despite Antigone and Creon’s different stances on law, they are ultimately more similar than different because of their shared value of loyalty and their shared characteristic, hubris.