Character Analysis On Antigone

Part A:

We can say that there are four main conditions for a character to be a tragic one with reference to Aristotle’s Poetics. First character must be an extraordinary person or have extraordinary abilities. Secondly, character must be a good one who will make an error and have an eclipse after. Third, character must suffer from this error. Lastly, character must be consistent on his/her behaviour, audience must be able to believe in his/her goal. Because of the facts that I’m about to explain, Antigone fits in these conditions so we can define her as a tragic hero. As we come to the flaws that makes Antigone a tragic hero, firstly we should talk about how extraordinary she is. She has a strong loyalty to the gods and, in contrast, a disloyalty

She is into religion and respects the gods. She loves her family no matter what they’ve done, and respects their right. It doesn’t matter if Polynices has gone to war with his brother Eteocles or they’ve killed each other for her. Still Polynices needs a proper and a decent burial. I believe that because of these two speciality, she is a good person. But her excessive pride and stubbornness has brought her downfall. I believe that her mistake was not to insist on burying Polynices, I think it was to argue with Creon. She has this extreme pride for burying his brother and will make sure that Creon knows this in their argument, after that Creon imprisoned her in the tombs. And this was her downfall. Lastly, we can say that Antigone died in the way what she believed in. She choose between what she believed and she Creon says. She was consistent to do the right thing for her. Moreover, there were people and even gods that believed in her. After Antigone died, Ismene thought that she died fighting against Creon and must get the same respectful burial just like their brother Polynices. Even gods believed in her that they sent their prophet Tiresias to warn Creon to change his thought.

Sophocles’ Antigone is a very confusing play because you can’t be sure if the tragic hero is Antigone or Creon. There are some opinions about that the real tragic hero is Creon because he fits in the conditions. But I believe that Antigone fulfils all of the requirements more than Creon, thus Antigone is the true tragic