Creon's Individuality In Sophocles Antigone

In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Antigone, a woman’s individual conscience trumps state law when Antigone displays time and again that she values her divine motives higher than those of the state throughout the tragedy. Her continued defiance of the state’s authority marks the importance of her individuality through various scenes in Antigone. Knowing full well her role as a woman in a patriarchal society, Antigone goes beyond the powers of the common man to carry on morals of herself and family exceeding beyond immortality and death. Engulfed in the menacing misogyny King Creon set forth in the state, Antigone is determined to thrive and keep the sacred deeds of herself and family in tact despite the fate it bears. The character of Antigone exhibits

The solemn fact that the pair involves a traitor of the state and the son of the king indicates the attitude Antigone has towards the state, and her determination to go against its norms. The companionship also brings the new revelation that Creon’s own son values individual conscience over state law into fruition. Upon the emergence of the his attachment to Antigone, he knows that being linked to the traitor will bring a heinous fate for himself. He goes to his fathers and declares that “(Antigone) will not die here… you will never see my face again” (Sophocles 27). Haimon speaks straight to the soul of state law when he tells his father that he would rather die than obey Thebian law. Subsequently, King Creon finally becomes aware of the disclosure that state law has displaced him from his own son, to which he springs to action. His efforts are inspired, yet meaningless when he finds that “Haimon is dead, and the hand that killed him is his own” (Sophocles 49). Creon’s dejected reaction to the death of his son reveals that even though the fatality was due punishment for the treason Haimon committed against the state, Creon’s individual conscience diminished the hubris he formerly had. The death and relationship of Haimon and Antigone, Antigone’s pursuit of God’s authority over that of Creon’s, and her burying Polynices display the theme of individual conscience vs. state law. By the bitter end of the tragedy, each main character had been affected by their individual conscience. The dual between individuality and law brought nothing but death and relentless sorrow to those of Thebes. If state law could tear a father and his own son apart, what could it do to a government and its’