Antigone Essay Sample

📌Category: Antigone, Plays, Sophocles, Writers
📌Words: 552
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 17 June 2022

Antigone, the story of the daughter of the tragic king named Oedipus. She was held in prison by her uncle King Creon because she disobeyed the laws. Set in Thebes, the city of chaos. Antigone's family passed away one by one because they wanted a position. For example, Antigone brothers Eteocles and Polyneices murdered each other to own the crown. Antigone proceeds to bury Polyneices because she thought he wouldn't find peace. Creon immediately captures Antigone and insists his son not marry her. Later one of the Sufis came to Creon and told him that if he doesn't free Antigone, Thebes will have to face harsh situations. In the end, Antigone hung herself, and Hemon, Antigone's fiance, stabbed himself and laid down next to her in a pool of blood. Creon loses each of his family members. 

Tragic is one of the philosophies  by Aristotle which is delivered in this play. I can state this because, as described by Aristotle, tragedy is an action that is serious, complete, and pity/fear affects the proper purgation of the emotions. In this play, there are many situations where Antigone shows the fear she has for disobeying the rules of God. Also, this play is serious since Creon is super arrogant about his situation. I can infer this because of the arrogance he lost his family. Creon is the central tragic figure of the play because Creon shows reversal and recognition.

Aristotle's Philosophy of reversal is used by using it on Creon. Because as Aristotle said, a tragic hero should suffer a reversal of fortune. Creon was known as a great leader for Thebes. Though, he came up with a brilliant plan of rebuilding the kingdom. Creon's laws were fair to everyone. Although Creon had the power he was lonely and lost all his family members. As you can see here Reversal is being used here, because reversal is something that goes from good to bad. As described by Aristotle, the life of the hero has to start off as good, then go bad. Something exactly like this is happening with Creon. His life went from good to bad. There was a time where Creon had his son, his full family next to him and now he's alone.

Recognition is applied to Creon because Recognition means something that happened because of their actions. Because of Creon's actions, his life changed. If he didn't mistakenly take Antigone as the traitor, Antigone would've never killed herself while his son didn't have stabbed himself. Creon had so much pride in himself that it led to his loneliness and the loss of his loved ones. In other words, whatever Creon is right now, it's mainly because of his actions. Also, Aristotle explained that you can't have a real tragedy if the hero/character doesn't recognize they're suffering because of their actions. Creon figures that because of his actions, Haemon, his son, died. 

To sum up, Creon is the central tragic figure of the play because Creon shows reversal and recognition. The philosophy of reversal was used because Creon's life went from good to bad. When he was not a King he was fine. When he became a king, he started making mistakes. He was fair to everyone before he became a king and because of his mistakes, he had a negative impact. On the other hand, recognition was used because he led his life in this situation because of his own mistakes. The philosophies of Aristotle that are indicated here, supports my claim because they prove that Creon had difficult situations because of his own mistakes.

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