Tragic Hero Characterization In Agamemnon And Antigone Essay, Research Paper

“Pity and Awe, reconciliation, exaltation and a sense of emotion purged and purified thereby”1. As this quote from Aristotle’s Poetics states, a tragedy must arouse feelings of pity and fear, thus producing a catharsis of these emotions in the audience. In order to arouse the emotions of the audience or reader, writers must produce characters that are known as tragic heroes. A tragic hero is characterized as the hero of a tragedy who is usually well known or prosperous, involves a protagonist who is better than ordinary people, and are neither completely virtuous nor villainous. The most important characteristic of the tragic hero is that he or she must come to a downfall as a result from an error in judgment or a fatal character flaw. Creon, Antigone, and Agamemnon are the tragic heroes in Sophocles’ Antigone and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. The tragic heroes of Antigone and Agamemnon compare and contrast.

Royal or noble status is common to tragic heroes. In the two tragedies, characters of royal or noble status were usually the most important characters in the play. Their high rank in society and influence on the less noble or peasant class often lead to their excessive pride or hubris. In the play Antigone, Creon exhibits his hubris by refusing to listen to others. After being confronted by both Tieresias the prophet, the Sentry, and his own son Haimon, Creon refuses to submit to god’s law due to his hubris. God’s law declares that all men deserve a proper burial and Creon passes a law stating it a crime to bury Antigone’s brother, Polyneices, because he considers him a traitor. Creon’s opposing character, Antigone, exhibits the same hubris. On the opposing side of the argument, Antigone feels that her brother deserves a proper burial. The character feels so strongly towards her argument that she is willing to go against the orders of King Creon, putting herself at risk because she refuses to submit to man’s law. Tragic heroes also suffer from excessive pride or hubris in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. The play’s tragic hero, Agamemnon exhibits his hubris in the play by choosing to sacrifice his daughter over dereliction or failure of duty. He made the tragic mistake of sacrificing his daughter’s life to the gods in hopes that they would send strong winds to blow his armies’ ships towards Troy for the Trojan War. After sacrificing his daughter, he eventually arrived at Troy where he fought for several years. In Agamemnon, Agamemnon has arrived to his kingdom after nine years and is unaware of the doom that awaits him. Unlike Creon and Antigone, Agamemnon really is not an opposing force to a conflict in the story. Creon and Antigone directly inverse each other creating the clash between the two opposing arguments while Agamemnon is represented as an honorable war hero who made a tragic error in judgment which ultimately leads to his downfall in the story. He gives ut-most respect and honor to the gods and claims that the god’s are responsible for his arrival and victory. ” First, with justice I salute my Argos and my gods, my accomplices who brought me home and won my rights from Priam’s Troy- the just gods.”2 Agamemnon is represented as a character who appreciates his triumphs and is satisfied with his arrival at his kingdom where else in Antigone, we see the two characters Creon and Antigone who possess an eternal passion to succeed the each other and are unwilling to submit to compromise.

The tragic heroes of both works inherit a family curse. Agamemnon is a descendant of the cursed house of Atreus. King Atreus was the son of Pelops. His father, Tantalus of Lydia, who was the founder of the family on which the Oresteia encircles, served Pelops to the gods as a meal. His brother, Thyestes, cursed him for feasting him on his own children’s flesh. Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who inherited the curse. Antigone also inherited a family curse. Her father, Oedipus, passed a curse along to all of his children after unwittingly killing his father and marrying his mother. Because of the curses passed along to both Antigone and Agamemnon, their fate is already predetermined. The characters can not change their tragic fate under the circumstances and must suffer into truth. Creon, who is also the sister of Jocasta, is also part of the family curse. By the end of the play, his wife and son commit suicide due to his actions, thus he must also suffer into truth.

In Sophocles’ Antigone, both Creon and Antigone recognize errors in judgment. Antigone recognizes that she may have gone a little overboard with her rebellious acts towards Creon’s policies even though they are justified in her opinion. Once she is close to death, we see a slight change in her character. At the beginning of the story, she’s strong willed, arrogant, and full of hubris. When she comes closer to her doom, we see her asking for pity and sympathy. “Look upon me, friends, and pity me.”3 Creon doesn’t recognize the error of his ways until after the death of his son, wife, and Antigone. He deeply regrets that his refusal to release Antigone leads to the death of his loved one’s, the cause of his eternal suffering and misery. Agamemnon’s feelings towards his mistake are never revealed in the play. Unlike Sophocles, Aeschylus doesn’t provide any evidence that Agamemnon actually recognizes his mistake or error in judgment before his death. Even in Homer’s The Odyssey, when Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus in the land of the dead, he curses his wife and her lover who plotted his murder but does not even mention his error in judgement. This leads to the conclusion that Agamemnon never really understands the true effects of sacrificing his daughter and if he does, he does not mention it in his dialogues in the play.

I see Aeschylus’ characterization of Agamemnon as more placid in comparison to Sophocles’ characterization of Antigone and Creon. Agamemnon’s character is relatively gullible and na ve in comparison to Creon and Antigone. Agamemnon is to foolish to even recognize his own hubris before his death and is characterized as a flat character because his character remains unchanged by the events in the play and is virtually the same character he is at the beginning of the play until his final ” Aaagh, again…second blow – struck home.”4 Creon and Antigone, however, exhibit a series of complex emotions that give insight into the characters’ emotions and the passion they feel towards their conflict. At the beginning of the conflict, both characters exhibit strong feelings towards their arguments, ” Creon is not strong enough to stand in my way.”5 At the end of the play, Creon waits too late to question his actions and must suffer. Creon, Antigone, and Agamemnon are both benevolent and sinister. Creon does behave irrationally towards Antigone but if he allows her to get away with breaking a law, his effectiveness as a ruler would be questioned. Antigone did cause trouble by breaking the law but she loves her brother and feels he deserves a proper burial. She only wants to give her brother the respect he deserves in her opinion. Agamemnon did sacrifice his daughter to fight in a war caused by his brother Menelaus’ unfaithful wife but he had to show his patriotism to avoid being shunned or overthrown due to his lack of loyalty to his kingdom. Because of his curse, whichever decision he makes is going to end in tragedy. These tragic heroes are neither completely sinister nor completely benevolent but possess a combination of benevolent and sinister character traits.

The tragic heroes Creon, Antigone, and Agamemnon compare and contrast. By studying these characters, we can see how the characterization techniques if both writers are similar and different. Sophocles dedicates the majority of the Antigone to character dialogue where else Aeschylus uses the commentary of the chorus to tell the story with brief conversations between the characters. In Antigone, we learn more about the characters through their spoken dialogues where else Aeschylus uses the monologues of the chorus in order to provide background information on the characters. Both methods are effective in arousing a catharsis of emotions in the audience. Ways in which the characters of the two works compare include excessive pride or hubris and family curses and the ways in which they contrast include characterization, realization of their error in judgement, and conflicts. In conclusion Aeschylus and Sophocles successfully demonstrated the range of characterization used in the development of a tragic hero. Aeschylus proved that not all tragic heroes are dynamic characters who must change at some point in the story because Agamemnon does not. Sophocles proved that there can be two opposing tragic heroes in a tragedy where neither side wins. These writers produced characters that compare and contrast.

1 Aristotle

2 Agamemnon by Aeschylus; translated by Robert Fitzgerald; pg.133 lns794-797

3 Antigone by Sophocles; translated by Robert Fitzgerald and Dudley Fitts pg. 527 lns 5 Scene 4

4 Agamemnon by Aeschylus; translated by Robert Fitzgerald; pg159 ln 1370-1371

5 Antigone by Sophocles; translated by Robert Fitzgerald and Dudley Fitts pg.495 ln. 35

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