Creon's Power In Sophocles Antigone

Power razes all of its enemies to the ground, and its enemies are ignorant of its presence.Power negatively affects others by turning someone with power on their allies, making the owner paranoid, and diminishing common sense.In Antigone, King Creon turned on his own niece in order to preserve his self-serving law. Power turns the holder onto their allies. Creon created fear in the hearts of his own sentries who selflessly worked hours keeping him safe. After gambling for the right to deliver the news, a lone sentry brazenly travels to tell Creon the news and after being berated says, “you have seen the last of me here…” and briskly walks off (scene I lines 160-163). Creon has disrupted the feeling of trust by misplacing fear in the hearts of the sentry because he wanted his edict to be all-powerful. Furthermore, in addition to turning compatriots onto allies, power also creates an unquenchable lust for itself and drives the owner mad with paranoia, trying to protect their power. When he was threatened by the daughter of the previous ruler to be dethroned, he immediately strives to install a new law, he knew she could not abide so that he would be left without competition. The fabricated mandate by Creon was, “...Polyneices… is to have no burial…”( scene I lines 43-44). When he made

Creon believes that he is right in executing his sister’s daughter when all of his workers, sentries, sons, and subjects know that he should not have sentenced Antigone to death for his own goals. The chorus of the play, which represents the thoughts of the commoners, begin to question Creon’s actions when they say, “Then she must die?”( scene II line 183). This suggests that the chorus has begun to waver in their trust of Creon, and proves that his thoughts have not been fully examined by himself because he thought that what he was doing was completely just but the chorus thinks