Law and character creon

Tiresiasthe blind prophet, enters. A strong leader would also be able to recognize his faults, but not Creon. Who Is Really Mad. When we first see Creon in Oedipus the King, Creon is shown to be separate from the citizens of Thebes.

Here, the chorus is composed of old men who are largely unwilling to see civil disobedience in a positive light. He has to look like a strong, unyielding leader, which is a problem. As Oedipus storms, Creon maintains his calm; when Oedipus cries out to be banished, Creon protects him with gentle firmness.

She wants her family to suffer no more dishonor, and to bury her brother, Polynices. Ismene serves as a foil for Antigone, presenting the contrast in their respective responses to the royal decree.

Koryphaios is the assistant to the King Creon and the leader of the Chorus. In BC, shortly after the play was performed, Sophocles was appointed as one of the ten generals to lead a military expedition against Samos.

When talking to Haemon, Creon demands of him not only obedience as a citizen, but also as a son. As the king of Thebes in Antigone, Creon is a complete autocrat, a leader who identifies the power and dignity of the state entirely with himself.

By not killing her directly, he hopes to pay the minimal respects to the gods. Antigone only wishes to fulfill the sacred rituals burying the death, therefore not defying the gods and their divine statutes. Creon, on the other hand, believes that citizenship is a contract; it is not absolute or inalienable, and can be lost in certain circumstances.

Creon is telling his people that Polyneices has distanced himself from them, and that they are prohibited from treating him as a fellow-citizen and burying him as is the custom for citizens. Creon demands obedience to the law above all else, right or wrong.

After Creon condemns himself, the leader of the chorus closes by saying that although the gods punish the proud, punishment brings wisdom.

The statue conveys the feeling of Antigone and her father struggling. Creon becomes furious, and seeing Ismene upset, thinks she must have known of Antigone's plan. The terrible calamities that overtake Creon are not the result of his exalting the law of the state over the unwritten and divine law which Antigone vindicates, but are his intemperance which led him to disregard the warnings of Tiresias until it was too late.

Finally, the character has an anagnorisis, which is their epiphany that makes them realize their hamartia and see their place in the universe.

This modern perspective has remained submerged for a long time. To find freedom, one has to make big sacrifices. A messenger enters to tell the leader of the chorus that Antigone has killed herself.

A sentry enters, fearfully reporting that the body has been given funeral rites and a symbolic burial with a thin covering of earth, though no one who actually committed the crime saw this.

Do as you think best. Man is twice deinon. The order he valued so much has been protected, and he is still the king, but he has acted against the gods and lost his children and his wife as a result.

Antigone manipulations will lead to complicated decisions and away from social obligations where she has to sacrifice her life for an unjust law to correct it. Having been properly buried, Polyneices' soul could proceed to the underworld whether or not the dust was removed from his body. A second messenger arrives to tell Creon and the chorus that Eurydice has killed herself.

Tiresias warns Creon that Polyneices should now be urgently buried because the gods are displeased, refusing to accept any sacrifices or prayers from Thebes. She even shows some qualities and characteristics of modern feminist as Nora Helmer from the Doll House.

Creon is stubborn and reluctant to back down from his laws.

As a result, People would rob, cheat taxes, and perhaps even kill to better themselves if they believed they could get away with it. His argument says that had Antigone not been so obsessed with the idea of keeping her brother covered, none of the deaths of the play would have happened.

You can imagine what value Antigone has put on his brother and not even realize the trials and tribulations that those people has endured because of his unsupportable reactions.

In Antigone, we at last see Creon comfortable in the place of power. Creon, as a male ruler, is responsible for the welfare of the entire city.

Antigone, as female, has a special role in the family, and particularly family burial rites. Thus both in doing their traditional tasks come into conflict with each other/5(94).

Creon's argument is also strengthened by the fact that he's the one who gave Oedipus the crown in the first place.

After the death of Laius, Creon was the King of Thebes. When the Sphinx started tormenting his city, he proclaimed that anybody who could solve her. As far as Creon's concerned, he has both law and the gods on his side. Antigone, however, believes that she is in the right. Whatever the law says—and in Thebes, Creon is the law—she answers.

Perhaps more than any other figure in the Oedipus Trilogy, Creon, Oedipus' brother-in-law, seems to be a very different character in each of the plays. In Oedipus the King, Creon. Creon insults Teiresias, believing that he's simply blackmailing him for money, but the prophet responds with a prophecy foretelling the death of one of Creon's children and a warning that all of Greece will despise the king if he does not relent.

Antigone wishes to honor the gods by burying her brother, but the law of Creon decrees that he shall have no burial since her brother is technically a traitor to the state.

Sophocles Antigone, the eldest daughter of king Oedipus and Creon, now the king of Thebes, both proud and willful people, are in constant conflict throughout the play.

Law and character creon