An Aristotelian Tragic Hero is characterized by seven different aspects; the tragic hero must have noble stature, be good but not perfect, have an error in judgment, have a downfall, go through catharsis, their punishment must exceed crime, and the audience must feel fear and pity for the character. The two plays Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles show the qualities of a tragic hero according to Aristotle using Oedipus and partially Antigone. The tragic hero title does not apply to a character that does not represent one or more characteristics. Antigone only represents some qualities of an Aristotelian Tragic Hero, whereas Oedipus represents all of the qualities.
Antigone may not represent all of the components of a tragic hero, but she does depict some. Her parents Jocasta and Oedipus did rule the thrown, and that gave Antigone her noble stature. Even though Antigone is pre-eminently great, she has flaws. She wants to honor her deceased brother, Polyneices, by burying him, but she wants to defy the laws openly to prove her point. After she commits the crime of burying her brother, Creon asks,
Creon: Did you know an edict had forbidden this?
Antigone: Of course I knew. Was it not publicly proclaimed?
Creon: So you chose flagrantly to disobey my law?
Antigone: Naturally… I feel no twinges of regret. (Sophocles Antigone 210)
This quotation shows how Antigone wants the whole city of Thebes to know that she will achieve martyrdom for her actions and because she just wants people to admire her. That also describes her downfall and error in judgment; she wants the world to know that she broke the law and that she did it for the Gods, but her hubris did not allow her to do it quietly. And as a result she received punishmen...
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...represent two, and that proves that the tragic hero in Sophocles’ plays is Oedipus. Bill Clinton demonstrates the qualities of a modern day tragic hero. The former president cheated on his wife and committed perjury and ended up becoming impeached as president. That shows that tragic heroes do not just exist in old literature, but in modern day life. Like Bill Clinton, Oedipus has all of the components of an Aristotelian Tragic Hero, while Antigone does not represent two.
Works Cited
Sophocles. "Antigone." Trans. Paul Roche. The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles. By Sophocles. Trans. Paul Roche. New York City: Plume, 1991. 191-252. Print. This source that I am comparing euthanasia to.
- - -. "Oedipus Rex." Trans. Paul Roche. The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. By Sophocles. and Paul Roche. New York: Penguin, 1991. 5-80. Print.
Antigone is a young woman whose moral background leads her to go against the wishes of the king to bury her brother, Polyneices. Sophocles uses Antigone as a character who undergoes an irreversible change in judgment and as a result, ends up dying. Antigone is hero, and she stands for honor, and divinity. Because Antigone's parents were Oedipus and Iacaste, she was born into a family of power; something that she could not change. At times, Sophocles leads the reader into thinking Antigone wishes she was not who she was. Ismene, Antigone's sister, refuses to help Antigone because (as she states) "I have no strength to break laws that wer...
Antigone, as a character, is extremely strong-willed and loyal to her faith. Creon is similarly loyal, but rather to his homeland, the city of Thebes, instead of the gods. Both characters are dedicated to a fault, a certain stubbornness that effectively blinds them from the repercussions of their actions. Preceding the story, Antigone has been left to deal with the burden of her parents’ and both her brothers’ deaths. Merely a young child, intense grief is to be expected; however, Antigone’s emotional state is portrayed as frivolous when it leads her to directly disobey Creon’s orders. She buries her brother Polynices because of her obedience to family and to the gods, claiming to follow “the gods’ unfailing, unwritten laws” (Sophocles 456-457). CONTINUE
Antigone holds her love of family, and respect to the dead, elevated beyond the laws of Creon, whom she believes, has no righteous justification to close his eyes to the honor of the deceased. In her determination to fulfill Polynices' rights, she runs directly into Creon's attempts to re-establish order. This leads to encounters of severe conflict between the dissimilarities of the two, creating a situation whereby both Creon and Antigone expose their stubbornness and self will.
The tragic hero, Antigone, is the tragic hero because she displays both good and bad throughout the greek tragedy Antigone. A quote that reveals she is good is “ This death of mine is of no importance; but If I had left my brother lying in death unburied, I should have suffered” ( 2. 69-71). This quote shows that Antigone is doing good because she is honoring her family by not leaving her brother unburied. Antigone is also seen as bad because King Creon talks to Antigone and says “ This girl is guilty of a double insolence, breaking the given laws and boasting about it” ( 2. 80-81). That quote shows Antigone is bad because she broke the law and was telling everyone about what she did , which also showed that she had hubris about her actions. Antigone is the tragic hero because
Boston: Pearson, 2013. 1396-1506. Print. The. Sophocles. “Oedipus the King” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.
“…a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions…These laws I was not about to break them… and face retribution of the gods.”(505-513) This provides a basis for Antigone’s hubris, her belief in God, standing for what is right, defying man’s rule. As the play progresses Antigone’s hubris becomes more apparent as she claims, “Give me glory! What greater could I win than to give my own brother a decent burial?”(562-563). This pride in committing a moral and God-willed deed reaches a point where Antigone thinks that it is
Throughout literary history, tragic heroes have been defined as a great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat. However, philosophers such as Aristotle tried to find connections between tragic heroes in Greek plays. This in-depth analysis of tragic heroes lead Aristotle to create six criteria for a true tragic hero: He or she has to be a Noble figure of royalty and noble in character, has to be imperfect by design, has a flaw or error that is a choice, is punished excessively for this choice flaw, has to undergo a downfall that leads to a realization, and the story of this tragic hero has to make the audience reach a moment of catharsis or purging of emotions. A prime example of a tragic hero that fits all of these criteria is Creon from the play Antigone, written by Sophocles in 441 BC. The story of Antigone is a tragedy that describes a stubborn and proud king named Creon who refuses to allow a burial for the brother of Antigone. Creon’s excessive pride leads to a series of unfortunate events resulting in the death of Antigone, his son Haemon, and his wife Eurydice. Throughout the course of the play, Creon undergoes each standard that is required by Aristotle’s terms to be a tragic hero.
Segal, Charles Paul. "Sophocles' Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone." In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
In the play Antigone, the debate over who is the real tragic hero is and the controversy of Greek ideals in the Antigone continues on to this day. Who is the tragic hero in Antigone? Is it Antigone herself or is it Creon the ruler of Thebes? The belief that Antigone is, is a strong one. Still there are people who think Creon is the tragic hero. Antigone is widely thought as the tragic her. The play is named after her. In addition, she is the antagonist in it. Many people usually associate the antagonist, the good guy as a tragic hero. Look at much television shows, especially cartoons, the good person usually wins. Then there are those who might think Creon was the tragic hero because the gods were against him, and that he truly loved his country. There are five criteria or standards you must meet first in order to be a tragic hero. First, you must be a person of high character or status. The character must not be too overwhelmingly evil or good. Then they must be brought from happiness to misery. Then brought from happiness to misery. Second, the hero enacts a harmartia, "wrong act." This either may be a flaw in judgment or an error. Third, the hero experiences a perpateia, reversal of fortune. This is the tragic downfall or plot twist in the story. Fourth, the hero recognizes his or her responsibility. Fifth, the story ends with a catastrophe. The catastrophe either may be an emotional event, this even may be a death.
Antigone uses the concept of death in many ways when unfolding the tragic story of Antigone and her rebellion. The most obvious way is how death is used as a form of capital punishment and justice against state-dubbed criminals and wrongdoers. The play first exhibits this notion when Antigone states, “No passing humor, for the edict says who’er transgresses shall be stoned to death” (Sophocles, p. 3). The head of the state, Creon, uses death as a form of justice for the man or woman who is to disobey his law. Creon also emphasizes this by threatening a guard when he is notified that his edict has been violated. Creon states, “Go, quibble with thy reason. If thou fail’st to find these malefactors, thou shalt own the wages of ill-gotten gains is death” (Sophocles, p. 8). Death is once again used as a threat and form of justice for people sinning against the state laws. However, death is not only used as a form of state justice, it is also portrayed as a factor in personal justification and completion. The notion that people are not whole or justified until they die is emphasized by Antigone when she states, “A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth, but by the dead commended; and with them I shall abide for ever” (Sophocles, p. 4). Antigone says that through death, human life is justified and made complete, and that death is essentially the final form of justice for any human l...
The play Antigone, is only one of a series of plays that link up with the other ones in a kind of consecutive order. The last one of this play series is called Antigone. The story is set in Thebes during ancient Greece and has great ties into Greek Mythology. In the play, Antigone is the daughter or King Oedipus, who if remembered correctly was told that he would murder his father by a soothsayer which led him on a journey away from his family, but little did he know that he was adopted and would run right into the path of his father whom he was to murder. The deed being done he marries his mother and has wonderful children. One of these children is the aforementioned Antigone and her and her sister Ismene. They are the last two left carrying the burden of the family curse that has been passed down for a few generations. At the beginning of this story Antigone has been caught giving her brother Polynices a proper burial by sprinkling dirt on his body even though this has been strictly forbidden by the king of Thebes, Creon, has made known that if anybody goes against his orders, they shall die immediately. The interesting aspect about the story is the moral high ground that Antigone decides to take by making a
The concept of tragic hero is very important in the construction of tragedy. It is the main cause of pity and fear. The tragic hero is a character between the two extremes; he is neither virtuous nor evil. At the same time, this character is better than the ordinary men or audience, he has some good qualities. Moreover, as a tragic hero, he is moving from happiness to misery by his downfall at the end. In fact, this downfall is caused by an error or a flaw in his character not by a vice or depravity. Another feature in the tragic hero is that he has good reputation and he is a man of prosperity. It can be said that Oedipus is a tragic hero because he has all the previous mentioned characteristics and the whole play is a classical application of this concept.
Oedipus the King by Sophocles has the ingredients necessary for a good Aristotelian tragedy. The play has the essential parts that form the plot, consisting of the peripeteia, anagnorisis and a catastrophe; which are all necessary for a good tragedy according to the Aristotelian notion. Oedipus is the perfect tragic protagonist, for his happiness changes to misery due to hamartia (an error). Oedipus also evokes both pity and fear in its audience, causing the audience to experience catharsis or a purging of emotion, which is the true test for any tragedy according to Aristotle.
In his Poetics, Aristotle defined the term 'tragedy' as 'a man not preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or depravity, but by some error in judgement' the change in the hero's fortune must not be from misery to happiness, but on the contrary, from happiness to misery'. From this definition, he further expanded it by defining the profile of the Classical Greek tragic hero, basing it on what he considered the best tragedy ever written, Sophocle's Oedipus Rex. He felt that a tragedy should comprise of the hero's goodness and superiority, a tragic flaw in which the hero makes fatal errors in judgement which eventually lead to his downfall, a tragic realisation in which the main character understand how he has unwittingly helped to bring about his own destruction and the absence of freewill in the tragic hero's life.