Antigone And Creon Essay, Research Paper

Many dramatic theorists have documented their opinions of Sophocles’ tragic play

Antigone. They have presented their interpretations as to the motives and moral

character of Antigone and Creon. I will attempt to encapsulate the basic logic behind the

arguments of the critics Brian Vickers, A.C. Bradley (who interprets Hegel), and H. D. F.

Kitto, and venture my own humble opinion as to their validity.

Brian Vickers clearly favors the character of Antigone. He challenges Hegel and

Hegel’s view that both Creon and Antigone were essentially right in their beliefs. Vickers

sums up Hegel’s theories in a single diagram (Vickers 526), showing Creon and Antigone

as forces in antithetical opposition. I believe that Hegel’s theories of tragedy, as explained

by A.C. Bradley, encompass much more than a simple diagram. Hegel thought that Creon

and Antigone represented these forces, but not necessarily that they were diametrically

opposed. Hegel thought that the tragedy of Antigone was that the beliefs of Antigone and

Creon forced them into opposition, because their beliefs were valid and just, though they

did not go about practicing their beliefs in a valid and just manner.

Vickers presents the notion that Sophocles himself favored the character of

Antigone, since Sophocles never criticized her. With this I must disagree; there were

many aspects of Antigone’s character that Sophocles would not have included had he

viewed her as above reproach. For instance, she is dreadfully overbearing and righteous.

While Sophocles clearly showed he could paint the picture of a sympathetic character if

he so chose in Oedipus the King, I believe that he deliberately made Antigone, frankly, a

much more bitchy character than Oedipus.

Oedipus displays sympathy and is emotive in ways that Antigone simply isn’t, and

that makes Oedipus the King much more tragic than Antigone. Here, Oedipus

demonstrates his compassionate nature when he tells the plague-stricken citizens of

Thebes how he feels for their distress (Sophocles 48):

Poor children! You may be sure I know

All that you longed for in your coming here.

I know that you are deathly sick; and yet,

Sick as you are, not one is as sick as I.

Each of you suffers in himself alone

His anguish, not another’s; but my spirit

Groans for the city, for myself, for you.

Oedipus will not be deterred in his search for the truth, no matter who tries to

persuade him to abandon the quest (Sophocles 64):

Oedipus: Do you know anything about him, Lady? Is he the man

we summoned? Is that the man this shepherd means?

Jocasta: Why think of him? Forget this herdsman. Forget it

all. This talk is a waste of time.

Oedipus: How can you say that, when the clues to my birth are

in my hands?

Jocasta: For God’s love, let us have no more questioning! Is

your life nothing to you? My own is pain enough for

me to bear.

Oedipus: You need not worry. Suppose my mother a slave, and

born of slaves: no baseness can touch you.

Jocasta: Listen to me, I beg you: do not do this thing!

Oedipus: I will not listen; the truth must be made known.

Oedipus’ conscious choice to pursue and accept his doom makes him a tragic

figure. Bernard M. W. Knox, author of The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean

Tragedy, points out that the hero has to choose between his doom and an alternative

“which if accepted would betray the hero’s own conception of himself, his rights, his

duties,” but in the end the hero “refuses to yield; he remains true to himself, to his physis,

that ‘nature’ which he inherited from his parents and which is his identity.” (Knox 106)

Therefore, one can see Oedipus’s unwavering insistence to uncover the truth about the

murder of Laius, and then about himself, as proof of the hero’s resolute commitment to

uphold his own nature. Oedipus’ unyielding quest for the truth fits his self image as a man

of action, the revealer of truth, and the solver of riddles. Knox adds that the hero’s

determination to act is “always announced in emphatic, uncompromising terms.” (Knox

22). Oedipus proclaims his intention of finding Laius’ killers by saying, “Then once more

I must bring what is dark to light.” (Sophocles 49).

The hero cannot be swayed by threats nor reason; he will not capitulate.

Creon, after being accused by Oedipus of conspiring against the king, retorted, “You do

wrong when you take good men for bad, bad men for good. . . . In time you will know

this well.” (Sophocles 58). Oedipus, however, never learns in time; he remains

unchanged.

Oedipus, after his terrible self-mutilation, realizes that he treated Creon unjustly:

“Alas, how can I speak to him? What right have I to beg his courtesy whom I deeply

wronged?” (Sophocles 70). But later, Creon has to remind Oedipus that he is no longer

king when he starts issuing imperious commands such as: “But let me go, Creon!”; “Take

pity on them; see, they are only children, friendless except for you.”; “Promise me this,

Great Prince, and give me your hand in token of it.”; “No! Do not take them from me!”

(Sophocles 71).

The hero provided the ancient Greeks the belief that in some chosen person

“humanity is capable of superhuman greatness . . . that a human being may at times

magnificently defy the limits imposed on our will by the fear of public opinion, of

community action, even of death, may refuse to accept humiliation and indifference and

impose his will no matter what the consequences to others and to himself.” (Knox 60).

This unyielding resolve to accept his doom, “no matter what the consequences to others

and to himself,” to bestow meaning to his life, gives the hero “a dignity, a nobility, and a

grandeur that do not tarnish with the passage of time. When he is most vulnerable, he is

most noble.” (Knox 60).

Antigone, meanwhile, has a certain dignity and nobility as well, but lacks the

emotional punch of Oedipus because she doesn’t care how her circumstances and

decisions affect others. She would feel hatred toward even a loved one who tried to stop

her (Sophocles/Jebb pars. 29-30):

Ismene: A hopeless quest should not be made at all.

Antigone: If thus thou speakest, thou wilt have hatred from me, and will justly be subject to the lasting hatred of the dead.

Antigone has one line which irks me in particular. After being discovered while

burying her brother’s body for the second time, Antigone is confronted by Creon, who

reasons that “A foe is never a friend–not even in death.” To this, Antigone responds,”Tis

not my nature to join in hating, but in loving.” (Sophocles/Jebb pars. 116-117). This

seems like an outright lie, something that a more tragic figure like Oedipus would never

utter. Antigone certainly demonstrates her nature to hate, when she condemns her sister

even as Ismene shows Antigone love (Sophocles/Jebb pars. 123-126):

Ismene: But now that ill besets thee, I am not ashamed to sail the sea of trouble at thy side.

Antigone: Whose was the deed, Hades and the dead are witnesses:

a friend in word is not the friend that I love.

Ismene: And what life is dear to me, bereft of thee?

Antigone: Ask Creon; all they care is for him.

Vickers says that Creon was “lawful” in decreeing that Polyneices not be buried,

but this is the only issue that Creon is “right” about. He believes that Creon is “repugnant”

to the reader, because Creon “gloats over the future fate of the corpse.” (Vickers 528). I

must disagree again. Creon was never repugnant to me personally. Had I been in his

position, and a nephew of mine committed treason against my kingdom and killed my

second nephew, I would have done much the same thing: let his corpse rot and be

consumed by scavengers. Neither would being challenged by a willful, bratty child bring

out my compassionate, loving side.

Antigone feels a duty and a necessity to bury her brother Polyneices, but rarely

does she mention any kind of suffering or loss. She seems concerned only with doing

the righteous thing. Meanwhile, Creon makes his decree out of passion and anger, and

that makes him more human to me than Antigone could ever be. Antigone becomes

distraught over her brother only when she discovers that he has ben re-buried, and it

seems that her distress springs from her actions being undone; the fact that that action is

burying Polyneices is only a coincidence.

Vickers believes that Creon has a “sadistic enjoyment of his brutality,” (Vickers

531) such as when Creon challenges the guard who reports that Polyneices has been

buried and threatens that guard with death if he does not uncover the culprit. I don’t see

Creon as enjoying his threats here. I believe that he is furious at being disobeyed. He is

enraged that someone cannot see things the way he does: a traitor’s body should receive

no special treatment. Vickers also says that Creon is especially angry at being challenged

by a woman; to this, I say: so what? The traditional role of women in ancient Greek

society, aside from the polis of Sparta which was the exception, was to stay indoors and

raise children. It stands to reason that Creon would indeed be angrier at being opposed by

Antigone, whose mission in life seems to be instigation anyway.

I can definitely relate more closely to H.D.F. Kitto’s interpretation of the play.

Kitto believes that Creon is the main character, and that Sophocles deliberately portrays

him as such. Creon has more dramatic forces deployed against him than Antigone, who

only has to face Creon’s wrath. Creon’s tragedy grows before our very eyes, while

Antigone’s doom is “forseen and swift.” (Kitto 127). The real conflict of the play,

according to Kitto, is the gods against Creon.

Unfortunately, Kitto goes on to say that Hegel’s view of Antigone is

“preposterous.” Hegel says that something is “seriously wrong” with Antigone, while

Kitto counters with the statement that “only Hegel can tell us” what Antigone’s “blemish”

is (Kitto 129). I have to agree with Hegel here. Antigone takes a principle, valid or not,

and rams it down everyone’s throat with her words and deeds. She is a glory hound and a

would-be martyr. She does not need to announce her deed, or be caught doing it; she

chooses this course of action. She invades a camp of guards and manages to bury a body

and leave no tracks. She surely must know that the body will be uncovered at some point,

so why does she not consider her duty done after the first burial? Or, since she is so adept

at sneaking around, why not remove the body and bury it somewhere it will never be

discovered? Did she intend to check the body every day to make sure it was still buried?

Her actions are nonsensical and illogical unless they are specifically engineered to say,

“Here I am, the only one doing the right thing, so punish me! I am better than all of you!”

There in no loyalty to her brother in her behavior.

On to Hegel: Macbeth is as “far removed” as possible from Antigone, but is still

“of one nature” (Bradley 89) with it. The death of Macbeth is much less tragic than

Antigone, because Macbeth wasn’t essentially a good man. Antigone was following the

edicts of the gods in burying her brother and was doing rightly as far as she knew. I

would agree that Macbeth’s death is less tragic, yet I feel worse for him than I do for

Antigone. At least Macbeth was an emotive, passionate man, not a righteous machine.

Hegel believes that all other things in tragedies being equal, the tragedy with the

hero as a good man is more tragic than as a bad. The more spiritual value, i.e. Antigone

doing her deed for spiritual purposes, the more tragedy in conflict and waste. The more

evil a character, the less tragic his circumstances. Moral evil diminishes the spiritual

value of personality.

Because Antigone and Creon are trying to do what they feel is right at heart, their

conflict has much stronger implications than the conflicts in MacBeth, since MacBeth

was a murderer who wanted to ascend to the throne. Which is not to say that MacBeth

isn’t a tragedy, because it is much more than just a conflict between good and evil.

Hegel believes that ethical or universal ends and justice have nothing to do with

catastrophe. A tragic action is a self-division, or internal conflict, and the catastrophe is

the annulment of this division, but this is only half of Hegel’s ideas.

A catastrophe has two aspects, negative and affirmative. It is a power which is

irresistible and inescapable, and negates anything incompatible with it. But if a

catastrophe were only such an unintelligent, characterless force, it would invoke feelings

of horror, with is not a feeling associated with tragedy (like pity and fear). It is also the

source of our feelings of reconciliation. The catastrophe is the violent restitution of the

divided spiritual unity, and some sort of projection of the division in the hero. So that

there is some sort of paradoxical feeling in the inevitable death of the hero, when we die

with him, yet exult or feel that his death means nothing. The hero escapes the power

which killed him.

Of the three critics and theorists, I relate to Hegel the most. He knows that

Antigone and Creon are flawed beings, though they do what they feel is morally right. He

realizes that they take their morality and let it become their personalities and define their

actions, instead of just influencing them. And therefore, though worthy of sympathy, they

are the masters of their fates, and choose their respective dooms.

Hegel believed that the tragedy of Antigone lies in the conflict between the

rules of the state and the rules of man. It is unfortunate that these two forces must be in

opposition, and therefore their practitioners or champions in this particular case have to

be in opposition as well. I agree with this; the tragedy is in the circumstances that pit two

essentially “right” forces against each other. The morality of the characters determines

the course of the tragedy, and their personalities and convictions determine the emotional

power for the reader.

Bibliography

Vickers, Brian. Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth, Society

Bradley, AC. Oxford Lectures on Poetry

Kitto, HDF. Greek Tragedy, A Literary Study

4. Knox, Bernard MW. The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy

Sophocles. “Oedipus the King”

Sophocles. “Antigone”