How Antigone and Creon Are Both Tragic Heroes

How Antigone and Creon Are Both Tragic Heroes

Introduction

Aristotle is considered as one of the greatest philosophers or theorists of Ancient Greece. A philosopher is referred as a person who looks for the perfect forms and ideas and tries to demonstrate the nature of truth and reality. Aristotle searched for ideal and perfect forms. This searching led him to discover several subjects. The analysis of Aristotle for the perfect form of tragic dramas eventually became a guideline for several dramatists in Western civilization (Smith, 2006). The history of literature shows that, for several years, the playwrights and dramatists of Europe, including William Shakespeare, tried to compose a play that would be similar to the Aristotle's plays. Literature's history shows that, drama was not made up by Aristotle. Actually, Aristotle used models from the work of well known Greek dramatists like Sophocles, in order to demonstrate his main theme and idea. The proceeding discussion demonstrates the characters of Creon and Antigone as tragic heroes, in the light of Aristotle's idea and criteria of tragedy (Smith, 2006). The proceeding paper also demonstrates that how the Creon and Antigone were the tragic heroes.

Discussion

Aristotle was one of the great philosophers who wrote several plays and dramas, which were based on the theme of tragedy. According to the definition of Aristotle, the tragedy is referred as the incidents which incorporate the feelings of fear and pity. All the plays of Aristotle are considered as his greatest master pieces, incorporating several features including spectacle, melody, diction, thought, character and plot. All these features were the core features of his dramas and Aristotle felt that all these features play a vital role in the success of his tragedy play (Thaler, 2008).

In the terms of literature, the word 'tragedy' is referred any sad situation or event. Conventionally, the term 'tragedy' is used for the kind of drama or play in which, the central character of the play is defeated. Additionally, sad situation or event, misfortune is also imitation (Thaler, 2008).

Sophocles is considered as one of the greatest playwrights. There are large number of master pieces which are composed by Sophocles. Sophocles wrote one of the famous and well known plays named, Antigone. Antigone is one of the greatest plays which hold all the aspects and features of tragic play. In the play, the two characters named, Antigone and Creon are considered as the main characters of the play. Both of these characters fit into a criteria of Aristotle ideas and models. They both played a role of tragic heroes. Antigone and Creon, both of these characters were neither evil nor good but they were the ordinary people. Both of the characters were born with prominent social status and both of them had some tragic mistakes in their characters (Smith, 2006).

Most of the people think that Antigone is the tragic character or tragic hero of the play. It is because of the reason that, some people take an idea from the ...