Antigone Essay, Research Paper

The most identifiable characteristic of a tragic hero is blindness. Not the physical

disability, but the lack of ability to be aware of his surroundings. The tragic hero in this

sense is blind from the start. He is not alert to the fact that the way he sees his situation

may not be true. Creon is not prepared to admit that he might be wrong. His vision may

well include a certain narrowness (something we might like to call tunnel vision), and yet

because he sees the world that way, he is also the one with the most confidence in his own

sight and the one most ready to act in accordance with what he sees. The way he sees the

world lies at the very source of what makes him the tragic hero.

What makes Creon such a shoe in for the role of the tragic is not that he suffers

horribly and endures at the end an almost living death, as one might expect. However, it

comes from the connection between Antigones sufferings as in the loss of her brother and

Creons own actions, that is, from the awareness of how he himself is bringing upon his

own head the dreadful outcome. All the negative aspects of the play are a direct result of

something Creon did.

This is an important point because in common language we often use the term

tragic as a loose synonym for terrible, pathetic, or horrible (e.g., a tragic accident). But

strictly speaking in a literary sense, true accidents are never tragic, because they are

accidents; they occur by chance. What makes this tragedy so moving is the step-by-step

link between the hero’s own decisions throughout the play and the disaster which awaits.

Sophoclean tragedy works, in part, through this sense of inevitability (Aristotle). Creon

is doomed, mainly because he is the sort of person he is. Someone else, someone with a

very different character, would not have suffered Creon s life.

It can be seen that one key to Creon s character is that he will not compromise.

He must see life through on his own terms, no matter what the cost. He refused to

recognize his son s love and eventually caused him to take his own life. Creon also was

not prepared to acknowledge authority outside his own. Antigone, being an independent,

was the bane to Creons existence. He could not be satisfied unless the world answered to

him and his every demand.

This sort of character is expressing a certain very powerful freedom: the freedom

to demand from life what he needs to satisfy him, no matter what common prudence,

ethical norms, or personal safety might dictate. In this sense, the tragic attitude, as

exemplified by Creon is an expression of our sense of individual freedom pushed to the

highest degree.

When we hear the word hero we usually don t think of the bad guy and when we

hear the word tragic we usually don t relate it to narrow mindedness. It s hard for anyone,

especially royalty, to see into the future the consequences of their actions. Creon was

heroic in trying to do what he thought was right. Unfortunately for Creon he let his

skewed view of what was true become his own personal reality. His actions brought the

eventual down fall of his family and because he was to proud to admit his fallibility, when

the smoke cleared, he was the only one left standing.