Similarities Between Antigone And Creon

In the play, Antigone, the title character challenges the king when she decides to bury her brother, Polyneices, who has been named a traitor. King Creon, her uncle, has come to power after the death of Oedipus and his two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices. Creon takes his role as king very seriously as he works to be a pillar of morality and uphold the laws of the city. After he deems Polyneices a traitor, he forbids anyone to properly bury the body: "leave him, unwept, untombed" (line 29) allowing the body to be "a rich sweet sight for the hungry birds beholding and devouring" (30). Throughout this play, several themes, namely human law versus divine law, are at play. In this essay, I will analyze Antigone and Creon's argument as it relates to

Creon is the brother of Antigone's mother, Jocasta. Essentially, he comes to power because there aren't any other males in the family to rule. Creon appears to be prideful, stubborn, and egotistical. He is concerned of how the people will view him or what they will think. He is determined to uphold human law at all costs. He leads me to think that he's upholding his law versus the law of the city. This is evidenced by Haemon's assertion that the people don't think Antigone deserves to die for her "crime" (733). Several characters, from the prophet Tiresias to Creon's son Haemon, urge Creon to reconsider the punishment for Antigone's "crime." Tiresias says “stubbornness and stupidity are twins” (1027) and in the end, it seems like personal motives rather than enforcing human law drives Creon's

Antigone is the strong-willed and stubborn daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. Her argument is in opposition to her uncle, King Creon. Antigone is propelled by grief to unlawfully bury her brother. She argues that "I shall suffer nothing so great as to stop me dying with honor" (96-97). In her view, she believes that not burying her brother, dishonors both herself and her brother. She insists that "in these things I am forced" (66). In this way, she's stubborn because she sees no other way to put herself at ease then to break the law. While her reasons seem solely personal, Antigone argues that Creon is "keeping from honor what the gods have honored" (77). In other mythological texts, there has been evidence that the gods don't approve of mistreating a person’s corpse. For example, in The Iliad, Achilles mistreats Hector's body and it causes the gods to argue and for Zeus to tell Achilles to ransom Hector's body so that it can be returned to his family. The prophet Tiresias says "what use is it to kill the dead a second time" (1030). Antigone and others recognizes the crime that Creon is commiting by dismissing the god's divine