Creon Is The Protagonist In Antigone

I believe antigone is the protagonist. It is Antigone’s actions that cause most of the conflicts in the play. She is the character who drives the action in the play Antigone. She is also the one who sets the tragedy into motion and is responsible for burying Polyneices, in defiance of Creon's strict edict. Without her, there would be no plot. When Antigone says, “ He is my brother. And your brother, too. Creon is not enough to stand in my way (Sophocles 17)”, she is initiating her rebellion against Creon, thus making her the protagonist. Creon’s soon to be niece, Antigone, is the one who allows the action of the story to stay alive. Antigone is responsible for breaking Creon’s edict, even though she knew it was not right. She admits her crime and this is where

Creon and Antigone clash for the first time.

After Creon locks Antigone away, It is Antigone's suicide that makes her future husband, Haemon, commit suicide. This, in turn, is the cause behind the Creon’s wife death.

Both of these event crushed Creon as shown when he says, “This truth is hard to bear. Surely a god has crushed me beneath the hugest weight of heaven, and driven me headlong a barbaric way to trample out the thing I held most dear (Sophocles 995).” Creon is not the protagonist, but he is a dynamic character because of his change in heart. He realizes that his choices and actions have caused a terrible fate for him; a life of loneliness. He recognizes the law he passed was a terribly awful idea and this makes Creon regrets his pridefulness. Antigone, on the contrary, understands exactly what is going to happen to her from the start of the play and never regrets what she has done. Antigone is a static character who does not change throughout the story. Although, Antigone never fully realizes her mistakes. She is stubborn and to some extent proud of burying her brother. She does not renounce these flaws during the play. One possibility is because they do not really work as flaws in this play. Her stubbornness leads to her capture and her

demise, but if one looks at her death as being necessary to bring about Creon's self-realization, it is a needed element in the plot. Also, it seems obviously clear that we are supposed to be sympathizing with Antigone during the end of the play, and not Creon. Creon himself, comes over to her point of view after all the tragedie during the end of the play. Also, this play was written by Sophocles before any concrete traditions were set regarding roles and protagonists. Because of this, I believe in Antigone it is really a matter of opinion who you think the protagonist is, but to me, Antigone is the real protagonist. The audience can choose which character to sympathise with, while still seeing another character as a protagonist. Antigone is the protagonist in the sense that the audience is to be sympathizing with her toward the end of the play, while Creon is viewed as the Antagonist because he is constantly repudiating her plan to make a proper burial for her dead brother.