Giving even the most well-meaning person power can change that person into a hungry tyrant. Sophocles, the author of Antigone, writes a character that does this exact trope. By presenting two separate monologues by Creon that are mere pages of each other, the reader can see this sudden change in character due to the increase of power. Before the monologues, King Oedipus has left Thebes after the tragic events of the opening scene, and his two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices are both dead by fighting each other over the control of Thebes. In the Greek play Antigone, Sophocles uses the characterization of Creon to depict the corruption of absolute power.
For example, in Creon’s opening monologue, Sophocles presents the leader as admiring. Now, Creon is the new king of Thebes and is proving himself through this monologue to give the people a taste of what his rule would be like. Sophocles presents Creon as admiring in the following excerpt of the monologue,“while Oedipus steered the land of Thebes / and even after he died, your loyalty was unshakable,” (Sophocles 186-187). The use of the word “unshakable” shows that he admired the strength of the loyalty between the people and Oedipus. Since the reader knows that the country was truly unshakable before the events, it could be seen almost as a metaphor that the country’s strength should be
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Starting off as a new and ambitious king, Creon in the first monologue appears as a ruler that is expected to rule well as he is admiring the people under the rule of Oedipus. But in the next monologue, Creon’s expectation falls as the people seem not to click with him as they do with Oedipus and already someone has defied his orders. One would expect a ruler to see reason for such acts but Creon acts harshly. This further proves how even the most well meaning can turn into a harsh tyrant that will put the blame on his own