Antigone The Island

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy,” once said F. Scott Fitzgerald and marked the characteristics of a hero (The Crack-Up, 122). A hero is the person who is destined for an unavoidable downfall through a shift from ignorance to knowledge. For such characters, one moment changes everything and sets the flow of events on a direction of a fatal flaw. The plays Antigone by Sophocles and The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona are no exceptions. Creon from Antigone and Winston from The Island experience the transition to knowledge from ignorance. In the play Antigone, Creon’s shift from ignorance to knowledge is seen through his transition from hubris to devastation. “I now possess the throne and all its powers,” says Creon at the beginning of the play, as he lists the principles that will come into prominence in the governing of the State (Sophocles, ln. 193). Creon is determined to impose his laws upon the society. He forbids burying the body of Polynices, the exiled brother of Antigone, and declares that “death is the price,” (Sophocles, ln. 247) for breaking his rules. When Antigone buries his brother, twice, and gets caught, Creon sentences Antigone to be left in a tomb away from the State. His stubbornness to force his word on Antigone continues even when Antigone and the people glorify her actions by stating that Polynices was her brother and neither gods nor traditions could allow her to leave her brother’s body on the ground, unburied (Sophocles, ll. 504-6). Creon, blinded by his power and hubris, plugs his ears to all reason presented by his son Heamon, and tells Heamon to “let [Antigone] find a husband down among the dead,” (Sophocles, ln. 93) wanting to kill his own son’s bride. Creon is not only ignorant to the consequences of his actions, but also lacks wisdom and justice in sight. Creon knows Heamon loves Antigone, and he knows that people support her actions. People think that she does not deserve death but “she should be