Antigone Creon Tragic Hero

If you asked a writer in ancient Greece what a good tragic hero would be, they would say something along the lines of “a person who succumbs to their fatal flaw in order to prove a point.” According to this statement, in my opinion, Creon fits this role perfectly in more ways than one. This is something that might not be easily seen due to the fact that Creon is usually listed as the antagonist, but a bit of looking can say otherwise.

The first shred of evidence is the fact that Creon has a major fatal flaw, which is his pride and ignorance. The flaw majorly impacts his ability to reason normally, which leads to decisions such as ignoring Tiresias (Ln. 1038-1099) and sentencing Antigone to death (Ln. 500-505). This fatal flaw creates the

While yes, in most cases the tragic hero typically dies, this does not need to happen to be a tragedy. One of the biggest things about the role Antigone fills, is can be transferred between different people. If we placed Antigone’s sister Ismene into Antigone’s position in the story, the story would not have been affected at all. However, if Creon’s position was changed, the entire dynamic of the story could change without trying, especially when Creon learns of his mistake (Ln. 1289-1300 and 1302-1307).

The third and final point is that Antigone does not change throughout the story, while Creon does. Through various points of the story, Antigone does not change and has the same personality throughout the entire story. Compare her from Line 80 to Line 845, in comparison to Creon between Line 162 and Line 1269. As you can tell, his personality dramatically changed from the start of the story to the end.

Overall, despite the name of the tragedy, Antigone is not the tragic hero. Due to the definition of a tragic hero as defined in the beginning, Creon would be the tragic hero, because of his fatal flaw, personality change, and inability to be replaced in the story. While yes, he can appear to be antagonistic, he is