Analyzing The Tragic Character 'Creon In Antigone'

Gonzalez 1

English Honors
22 November 2011
In the story “Antigone” both characters, Antigone and Creon are examples of tragic characters. The tragic character is a man of noble stature. He is not an ordinary man, but a man with outstanding quality and greatness about him. This character causes his own downfall due to his own tragic flaw. Creon is a tragic character in the story because of his tragic flaw, his pride and failure to understand when he is wrong. This flaw causes the downfall of Creon because he does not listen to anyone when everyone was telling him to just stop and release Antigone. Antigone is also a tragic character in this story. She is a tragic character because she is stubborn and goes through an outburst of fear and self-pity after she is facing death. Antigone stays loyal to her family that slowly brings her to her down fall. In my opinion though I believe that Creon is the real tragic character because Creon is a perfect example of what Aristotle described in his book “Poetics.” In Aristotle’s book he describes a tragic character as a character that should have harmartia, peripetia, catharsis, and anagnorisis. Creon goes through all of these stages during the story. His character flaw is his excessive pride and
“Nothing you say can touch me any more. My own blind heart has brought me from darkness to final darkness.” (Page 806 Lines 94-96) Creon was so sad that he could not feel any pain. Creon says that nothing can touch him; nothing can make him any sadder than he already is. He also says that his blind heart has taken him from darkness to complete darkness, by this he means that he was already sad when he found out the news of Hameon then found out about his wife also. Creon’s life took a complete change of routes and it all happened so sudden. Creon released his emotions and felt sorrow for