Similarities Between Antigone And Creon

Anouilh’s original characterization of Creon and Sophocles’ characterization share similar ideas, but Sophocles’ Antigone carries a unique tone and a creative twist to Anouilh’s original work. Antigone, a play about the life of King Creon and his family, demonstrates how Creon’s life progresses through triumphs and downfalls and the growth and development of relationships between Creon and the people who surround him. In Anouilh’s play, Creon uses his power to try and persuade Antigone not to bury his dead brother, Polynices. When Creon tells him to stop, Antigone stops and says that’s she is just going to do it all over again. Creon says, “I had forbidden it” (Anouilh’s 895). Creon is in a state of power and he is trying to use it on

His feet have trodden so long the crooked ways of statecraft that he has lost the capacity to walk straight. His moral vision is warped, so that he no longer distinguishes between right and wrong. Ever insensitive to the suffering of others, he has reached the point where the feelings and claims of the individual count for nothing as against the demands of political expediency. Yet the garments of falsehood and hypocrisy fit him ill, and one glimpses beneath them the square built outline of the earlier Creon. He is not the natural villain, but the honest man gone wrong.” (Peterkin

Antigone comes out as the only one in Thebes that will speak up about Polynices burial. Creon has no room in his kingdom for people that put private matters above the other people of the common good. He wants no part of what Antigone is doing t her brother and thinks that what she is doing, she should be put to death for it. “(Chorus) There is a certain reverence for piety. But for him in authority, he cannot see that authority defied; it is own self-willed temper that has destroyed you.” (Sophocles 1587). Creon is used in this play as the bad guy or antagonist. He does not want Antigone’s brother to have the proper burial because he betrayed all the common people when in battle. The twos play use Creon in the same light but with different words and different