Obedience To Civil Law In Jean Anouilh's Antigone

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Recommended: Antigone and creon as a tragic hero

Katherine Gallant
Mrs. Principe
ENG2DP-01
October 2017
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Obedience to civil law is necessary to uphold order and peace. In the play, Antigone, by Jean Anouilh, Creon, the king of Thebes, states that anarchy is the greatest of evils and that good lives are made through discipline and lawfulness (Anouilh 42-47). Creon’s judgment and emphatic support of civil law makes him an inadequate leader because his actions in various situations lead to the untruthful messages to his people and the loss of his family members. First off, Creon’s belief in civil law caused him to do a grave action which in time lead to his downfall, he lied to the city of Thebes. Creon was never meant to be the king of Thebes, until the deaths of both princes, Polynices and Eteocles, he had no choice but to step up to the throne. He was unprepared and unqualified, he had to tell the city of Thebes the story of how both man died. So, Creon lied about what happened between the two brothers, making one the hero and one the villain; “Well, what else could I have done? People had taken sides in the civil war. Both sides couldn’t be wrong; that would be too much. I couldn’t have made them swallow the truth.” (Anouilh …show more content…

He is shown as a dishonest, hubris, and ignorant leader denying Polynices’ burial and condemning Antigone to death. His tenets in the value of lawfulness and discipline created tragic flaw in his character, similar to Oedipus making them both ineffective leaders spiraling to their eventual downfall. People have to understand when the law isn’t absolute, human error does exist and situations can arise where the result can go against people’s rights and beliefs, but the leader should be able to decide to create the best result for the

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