Creon:“I killed you, my son, without intending to,/ and you, as well, my wife,” (Lines 1486-1487). Antigone is the story of a girl who defies the king of Thebes in order to honor her dead brother, Polyneices, who is not allowed to be buried. When the king decides to punish her, his inability to listen to reasoning and resistance to change backfires on him in a deadly way. In the play, Antigone, by Sophocles, Creon, the play’s tragic hero, brings suffering to others, such as causing the death of Antigone, his son, Haemon, and his wife, Eurydice, which contributes to the tragic vision of the play as a whole because it shows how stubbornness brings pain for others. To begin with, Creon brings suffering to Antigone by refusing to change and …show more content…
Another characteristic that defines a tragic hero is that they experience misfortune that is not entirely deserved, and in this case, Creon did; he experienced the loss of both his wife and son. In Antigone, it states, Messenger:“we saw Antigone hanging by the neck/… Haemon had his arms around her waist-/ he was embracing her and crying out in sorrow for the loss of his own bride/...Angry at himself, the ill-fated lad/ right then and there leaned onto his own sword,” (Lines 1359-1377). After Antigone decided to take her own life, Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s husband, saw Antigone’s body and decided to end his own life as well. Not only did Creon cause the death of Antigone, he also inadvertently caused the death of his son, Haemon. In addition to the death of his son, Creon also caused the death of his wife, Eurydice. In Antigone, it states, Messenger:“She killed herself,/ with her own hands she stabbed her belly,/ once she heard her son’s unhappy fate,”(Lines 1460-1462). Once Creon’s wife, Eurydice, received the news of her son’s suicide, she decided to take her own life as well. So, in addition to Antigone’s and Haemon’s death, Creon also caused his wife’s death because he refused to let Antigone go sooner than he did. This whole ordeal stems from Creon’s stubbornness which embodies the play’s tragic vision because it shows how one’s