Creon's Inexperience and Tragic Downfall in Sophocles' Antigone

Introduction: Creon's Path to the Throne

In the play Antigone by Sophocles, Creon brings disaster upon his family because he lacks experience and does not yet know how to rule wisely.

Creon becomes King of Thebes at the beginning of the play because Oedipus' two sons, who were supposed to share the throne by ruling in alternate years, had a falling out. Eteocles refused to turn the throne over to his brother Polyneices. Polyneices attacked the city in an attempt to right this wrong, and during the ensuing war both brothers killed each other in battle. Creon, as their uncle and Oedipus' brother-in-law, then took the throne.

This situation — two co-kings who ended up warring with each other — left Creon with a difficult dilemma. The people of Thebes were still uneasy, and he suspected that not everyone was ready to accept him as king. This made Creon deeply suspicious. He concluded that he must demonstrate his strength of will no matter how difficult that might prove, setting the story up for multiple tragedies. Because of his suspicions and his uncertainty about whom he could and could not trust, he let rigidity win out over reason.

Creon's Insecurity and the Decree Against Polyneices

Creon desperately wants to project confidence and proven ability to rule. He knows that Thebes has been through a terrible and divisive ordeal, and he believes that as king he must be strong, resolute, and unbending — that any sign of weakness is likely to throw the city back into turmoil. At line 162 he says, "…the gods who heaved and tossed the city on high seas have set its affairs straight again."

He goes on to say that the people do not know him yet, and that he must demonstrate the kind of ruler he is. He must recognize, on some level, that his ruling about Polyneices is questionable, because he places guards around the body and says aloud that someone might be bribed to bury him. He wants to appear strong, but he is suspicious and does not know whom to trust.

One of Creon's first decrees was that since Polyneices attacked the city he was a traitor and therefore undeserving of burial. His niece Antigone, sister to both slain men, was horrified by this, believing it went against the laws of the gods. She buried her brother, incurring Creon's wrath. Not thinking he could afford to be seen as bested by a woman and still maintain his position of power, he sentenced Antigone to death for defying his order — even though she was engaged to his own son Haemon. By the time Creon realizes his mistake, Antigone has died, Haemon has killed himself in grief, and Creon's wife has ended her own life after blaming Creon for the loss of two sons: one in the recent war, and one in its aftermath.

Antigone's Defiance and Creon's Stubbornness

Creon is the antagonist in the play, and Sophocles gives him a protagonist in Antigone who will inevitably cause him to dig in his heels and grow even more stubborn.

As Lines (1999) writes, "Antigone stands noblest and most heroic among all the characters, defiant of man's rule and insisting on God's justice." Antigone recognizes that the gods have decreed that the bodies of all people should be buried, even the bodies of one's enemies. Driven by the dual desire to show respect to her brother and to honor the gods' commandments, she defies her uncle. When arrested, she is arrogant rather than penitent, and she lectures him.

This only hardens Creon's resolve. He sees himself as a noble and just king prepared to do anything to preserve Thebes' peace. Yet his suspicious nature causes him to accuse people unjustly. When a watchman reports that someone has tried to bury Polyneices, Creon assumes first that the culprit is a man, and second that the act was done for money. When he discovers it was Antigone who buried her brother, he then assumes her sister Ismene plotted with her to defy him, and that both women are temporarily insane. He cannot conceive that a woman — or women — would defy him, or that he might be disobeyed out of either familial love or devotion to the gods.