Creon Tragic Hero Essay

As defined by Aristotle, a tragic hero is one who is not entirely good or evil. They are an individual who experiences a “reversal of fortune through a fault of character or an uncontrollable accident” (Boucquey). He or she undergoes a dramatic change from happiness to misery (Boucqyey). In Sophocles’ Antigone, Creon is the tragic hero. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero should contain four traits: goodness, appropriateness, lifelike, and consistency, which Creon most prominently displays. When he sentences Antigone to death, Creon is acting on his belief that religious duties should come second to the will of the State and standards of ethics (Ehrenberg). To him, he had all reason to cast away Antigone’s brother because he was a rebel, and his punishment was to go without burial. He wants to rid the city of rebels to maintain rule and keep her brother as warning to those who may try to rebel against him (Ehrenberg). As Creon understands it, “the hostile brother has become a hostile political exile” (Ehrenberg). None the less it is his blind actions and tyrannical qualities of which he makes his mistake, one that ultimately dominos into his downfall.

When Antigone attempts to bury her brother, according to Creon’s laws, she had committed treason. He states, “Let’s lost a man at least! Is a woman stronger than we?” (Sophocles 792). His egotistical refusal to relent and mercifully let Antigone grieve her brother, was his initial mistake (Bloom). He later realizes this when he is forced into loneliness as a result of his wife and son’s deaths, who killed themselves in the abundance of grief Creon sparked when he sentenced Antigone to death. In the play, Choragos states, “there is no happiness where this is no wisdom; no wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, and proud men in old age learn to be wise” (Sophocles