Kevin McAdam
English 10 Honors/ Mr. George
10/26/08
Antigone Essay

CREON: VILLAIN OR HERO

The greatest difference between the two stories “Oedipus the King” and “Antigone” is the dramatic change in the role of Creon. In “Oedipus the King”, we first see Creon as a level-headed person who is second to the throne and was comfortable with that. Creon proves to be a loyal aid to Oedipus, the king of Thebes, by helping him with problems and giving his advice as well as opinions when they were needed. In “Oedipus the King”, Creon can easily be seen as a “good guy” that many people can relate to compared to other characters like Oedipus who are corrupt with power and have no restraints on his actions. In “Antigone”, the role of Creon, who had recently became the new king of Thebes, had seemingly been reversed as the corrupting nature of power had overwhelmed Creon and changed his entire outlook on justice and fairness. Creon, like Oedipus, soon became skeptical of everyone around him claiming that they were all wrong in their advice and opinions. Creon, being consumed in corruption, could not see the tragedies occurring in his city that he had set out to stop at the beginning of his reign. Creon later encountered a great fall as a result of lack of trust in those closest to him, discrimination against people of Thebes, having poor leadership abilities, and making poor decisions in spite of good intentions. A glaring reason as to why Creon failed as a king, not to mention Oedipus, was that he had such a lack of trust in everyone around that he made it impossible to get through to him by giving advice or relaying warnings. Throughout the kingship of Creon, the only person he would listen to would be himself as his power was so great that he could rule his city the way he wanted without anyone stopping him. From Creon’s perspective, everything was well because he was ruling his city the way he wanted and was blind to all the problems polluting Thebes. To an outsider entering the city, things were in chaos, but he had no power or authority so he could do nothing to stop the madness. “Then by Olympus be quite sure of this: You shall not rant and jeer at me without reprisal.”(225) Even here Creon is mad at his son, Haemon, for questioning his methods of governing Thebes and reprimands him strongly for it. On top of not listening to others’ advice was bad enough, Creon becomes a very discriminating person who tries to make the lives’ of his enemies as miserable as possible. Once Creon had gained his power over Thebes he immediately changed into a discriminating person, especially towards women, which is not exactly one of his most obvious flaws to other characters in the play. In ancient Greek times, women were constantly treated unfairly and had almost no rights. When Creon was sexist towards Antigone and Ismene it was not noticed as much as today because that is the way things were back then. Throughout the play there are several instances where Creon acts sexist including this quote, “Let us then defend our authority and not be ousted by a girl. If yield we must, then let it be to men, and never have it said we were worsted by a woman.”(221) these powerful acts of sexism, although not radical thoughts in those days, were serious blows to the character of Creon. He could have simply been neutral on the subject of women but since he made those comments, he angered people in the city and many gods for not being an unbiased leader. Creon believed that a man was the one who buried Polyneices when he says, “I swear by almighty Zeus whom I revere and serve, that either you find the man who did this burial and stand him here before my eyes, or Hades itself will be too good for you until you’ve first confessed to everything- yes, hanging from a cross.” (203) the news that Antigone broke his law made Creon madder because of his passionate discrimination towards women. Creon’s strong sexist attitude soon just became another piece to the corrupting puzzle of Creon’s reign over Thebes. Creon’s leadership abilities really have to come into question when you think about his tremendous fall from the throne. Creon did not make smart decisions that would have a positive reflection on himself, the gods, and the city of Thebes. Also, Creon tried to force everything to happen instead of letting things run their course. For example, “I’ve sent the edict out that none should bury him or even mourn.” (199) shows how Creon tried to make the decision whether or not Polyneices was admitted into Hades instead of letting the gods do it like they were supposed to. Creon never took the time to sit back and assess the damage that was being put on the city by himself and the citizens. He always tried to handle a million things at once which pressured him to make decisions swiftly. If Creon had the great attributes of a leader he would have taken the advice from Haemon, followed the warnings of Tiresias, and respected the gods enough to follow their orders instead of Creon calling all the shots. The start of Creon’s power of the throne begins badly and ends terribly. Like all leaders at some point, their first intention is to do good things for their people and to make things perfect, but as we see in “Oedipus the King” and “Antigone” things do not always turn out the way they were planned. In “Oedipus the King”, Oedipus’ plan to set out and find the killer of Laius completely backfired on him as he eventually figured out that he was the killer and his wife was actually his mother. Oedipus started out with good intentions and ideas, but once things started to go bad it snowballed into such great problems that Oedipus took his own eyesight. In “Antigone”, Creon believed that by making an example out of Polyneices, he could teach the citizens of Thebes some loyalty for the future. In doing so, he captured Antigone, whom Haemon loved. After Antigone had died, Haemon was furious with Creon but ended up dead after fighting with his father. Once Haemon had died, Creon’s wife, Eurydice, was so distraught she killed herself leaving Creon the only survivor of his family. In the end, each decision Creon made had a negative impact on something or someone which kept him away from his initial goal, to make Thebes a better place. Overall, the fall of Creon was caused by lack of trust, discrimination, poor leadership qualities, and poor decision making. After Oedipus had basically destroyed the citizens belief in him, Creon was the person they to be the new king of Thebes because they believed that he was a level-headed person who could bring peace, stability, and security to their land. From what they had seen in the past he was the right man for the job, but once Creon became king is when he started his fall from glory. Creon thought he could be a good leader and not become corrupt with power but his temptations got the best of him and he was not able to live up to his expectations just like Oedipus. When they were not kings Oedipus and Creon were two extremely different people. When they were rulers of Thebes, through their methods, corruption, and their falls they were virtually the same two people.

1. "Think, son think! To err is human, true, and only he is damned who having sinned will not repent, will not repair." (Tiresias, 237)

2. I believe that this quote is significant to the entire play because it says that making an error is not wrong, but not admitting and correcting your mistakes is. In Oedipus the King, all of the evidence added up that Oedipus killed Laius, but he did not want to hear it and kept rejecting every statement Tiresias put towards him. Sure the people of Thebes would be mad at Oedipus, but he could have accepted the facts sooner and tried to repent to gain the crowd's forgivness. In Antigone, Creon wanted to make sure his proclomation for the dead body was carried out so the citizens would think he was truthful. Unfortunately for Creon, he was too arrogant and believed in his words so much they turned in him. Creon kept barking orders for the death of Antigone that he was blinded from seeing that the gods did not want that to happen. Eventually, Creon's blindness and arrogance in one way or another caused the death of his niece, his son, and his wife.

3. Why does Creon still kill Antigone even after he was warned many times not to?

1. "Let us defend our authority and not be ousted by a girl. If yield we must, then let it be to men, and never have it said we were worsted by a woman." (Creon pg. 221)

2. Since Creon has taken over as the ruler of Thebes, his character has changed from into being a ruthless leader that does not care about anyone but himself. He says that he is looking out for the best intrests of the citizens of Thebes, but his decisions are continuously made based on his opinion of the matter. In this quote we see the theme of females having very little power in those times as Creon shows such great disrespect towards Antigone, Ismene, and all other females. We see that Antigone and Ismene are treated very poorly by Creon as he immediately condemns them to death as soon as they are brought before him. He says that even in this time of struggle in Thebes where discipline by many citizens including females is weakening, it is better to lose to a man and keep your dignity, than to be defeated by a woman and lose all honor.

3. Why would Creon make such terrible comments about women when he knows all of the citizens would be able to hear it and turn against him?