The Knight Of Faith In Antigone, By Jean Anouilh

In Kierkegaard’s existentialism, there is personal, aesthetic, duty, ethical duty, and religious duty to god. Within this existentialism, two important categories of people emerge, the knight of faith and the tragic hero. The knight of faith will relinquish his ethical duty for his religious duty, a course of action that demands blind faith. The tragic hero will surrender his personal duty for his ethical duty, an undertaking that we can all truly understand. Antigone, by Jean Anouilh, is a tragedy in which each of the main characters, Antigone and Creon, take actions similar to those of a knight of faith or tragic hero. Antigone is a member of the royal family, who ends being sentenced to death because she believes that her brother’s body

While the tragic hero will renounce his own will for the universal, the knight of faith will renounce the universal for the religious. The knight of faith is lead by blind obedience to god, a faith that he knows to be correct and true. Though his actions may not seem to have any ethical basis, the knight of faith is so confident in his beliefs that he will do whatever is asked of him by god. Though the actions taken by the knight of faith may seem as emotionally devastating as the actions of the tragic hero, the knight of faith believes so highly in a higher power that his actions do not produce such an emotional response. The knight of faith does not feel sorrow for his actions because he knows, within himself, that god has a larger plan, a plan in which his actions serve a purpose. That being said, because of this blind obedience to god, the knight of faith cannot be understood and wept for by others. The knight of faith has to act alone and depend on only himself, as he is the only person who can truly determine the purpose of his

Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, the sister of Eteocles, Polynices, and Ismene, and the fiancé of Haemon. Soon after Eteocles and Polynices kill each other in a duel, it Antigone is caught by guards digging a grave for Polynices’ body with in an attempt to bury him after his body had been left out to rot in disgrace. At first, Creon attempts to cover up this incident and send Antigone back to her bed by saying she was ill, but Antigone tells him that she will just go out that night and attempt to bury the body again. Though Creon does try to dissuade Antigone further, and brings up many good points about her brothers and their relationship with their father, Antigone still insists that she should be arrested. Even when Ismene attempts to ameliorate the situation, Antigone rejects her help, saying that Ismene does not deserve to die with her. Antigone even says that she should be killed soon because her disease, the disease that was making her crazy, was spreading to others. Eventually, Antigone is sentenced to be immured, with her execution spurring the suicides of both Ismene and