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Tragic Hero In Antigone

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Cindy Yoon
Mr.Constantini
English 1A
18 September 2015
Real Tragic Hero of Antigone
The play, Antigone is an Ancient Greek play mostly about myth written by Sophocles. There are two main characters in this play which are Antigone and Creon. Antigone is a girl who tries to bury her brother, Polyneices who died during the war and she chooses family instead of the government. Creon, is Antigone’s uncle, and also a King of Thebes who didn’t allow the people to bury Polyneices. He doesn’t like people who disobeys the rules of the government.They both are tragic characters because Antigone kills herself and Creon asks for his death to the gods.It can be argued that the tragic hero is Creon because of his excessive pride and his intense suffering at the end of the play.

First of all, Creon fits Aristotle’s definition of tragic hero, which is excessive pride, also known as hubris. Creon is overconfident about himself and he doesn’t listen to others. For example, when the Choragos asked Creon: “I have been wondering, King: can it be that the gods have done this?” (Scene 1, Line 13), Creon says, “Stop! Must you doddering wrecks go out of your heads entirely? “The gods!” Intolerable!” (Scene 1, Line 114-117) in a very vilely way. By this quote, we can know that Creon’s attitude to Choragos shows his fatal flaw. Another example of Creon’s overconfidence is when Haemon and Creon were having a conversation. When Haemon was talking about what Creon did was wrong, Creon says, “And the
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