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Comparison Of Creon In Jean Anouilh's Antigone

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The significance of the ship analogy used by Creon in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone.

-Ninad Patil
Word Count: 1456
The play Antigone by the French playwright Jean Anouilh is a Dionysian Imitatio of the play Antigone by Sophocles. Anouilh improvised on the play by Sophocles so that the new play allegorically represents the conflict of views between the Vichy government and the Free French Forces, during the World War II, when France was occupied by Nazi Germany. Similar to his other works, Anouilh explores the theme of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise in this play as well. In the play, the character Creon uses the ship analogy to explain his situation to Antigone, who stubbornly insisted on the burial of her brother even though it was prohibited, and to convince her to live rather than facing the consequences of the burial. In my essay I will be exploring how the analogy is a critique of the society and a representation of the political scenario of France during World War II.
Jean Anouilh uses the characters Antigone, Creon and the guards to convey the conflict of ideas between them. Antigone is portrayed as an idealist while Creon is portrayed as a pragmatist. This difference in the portrayal of these two characters can be seen when Antigone refuses to understand Creon, while …show more content…

He seems to be criticizing moral compromise, while making the readers sympathize with the one compromising by showing their thought process through the ship analogy. He seems to be suggesting that that even though one compromises his morals, he does so only because of the circumstances regardless of his own desires. He also criticizes the exactness and absoluteness of law and order in authoritarian

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