Explore the contrast of the influence of power on Creon in both Jean Anouilh’s and Sophocles’s “Antigone”
...s path to power. Creon’s passion for power leads to his abuse and belief that only he can wield power. In Anouilh’s Antigone Creon’s paranoia of a rebellion leads to a vision of a thin, pale youth consumed by anger as his assassin. “Again and again, I have imagined myself holding this conversation with a pale young man I have never seen in the flesh. He would have come to assassinate me and would have failed.”(Anouilh 793). Here Creon also introduces the figure of the thin and pale youth, the assassin whom Creon has long expected. As he tells Antigone, this assassin would remain impervious to all argument, replying to the king with his hatred alone. This youth clearly evokes the fantasy rebel Creon first imagined upon the discovery of Polynices' shovel. To Creon's surprise, this youth has revealed himself to be Antigone. He is also, however, a double for Creon, or rather, a figure for Creon's adolescent self. Thus Creon hears his youthful voice in Antigone's. He sees in Antigone a self similarly committed to self-sacrifice. Perhaps this self could have also been the present Creon's enemy and assassin. Whatever the case, Antigone smashes this self-image that Creon sees in her body, insisting upon her radical otherness. Refusing to reflect his self-image, she laughs at Creon. However, in the original Sophocles depicts Creon a rigid and inflexible tree, the embodiment of law itself. “But, as I live, she shall not flout my orders with impunity.”(Sophocles 202). Antigone and Creon’s direct confrontation further clarifies the nature of their disagreement. Antigone attacks Creon’s edicts on the grounds that his interpretation of justice and the will of Zeus is invalid. She may be correct, but in saying so she assumes the power to independently interpret justice and the will of the gods, just as Creon did. Her accusations are wild and reckless, and she seems to be trying to seize glory like the bravados the chorus condemned in their first ode. Nevertheless, our sympathies are most likely tipping toward Antigone in this encounter. Just before the argument between Antigone and Creon, the sentry gives a vivid and disgusting description of the disinterment of Polynices’ corpse. Polynices’ rotting body is the physical evidence, or perhaps a symbol, of the injustice of Creon’s decree and of the ruin it will bring about in Thebes. The description of the degradation of the corpse prepares the audience to be sympathetic to Antigone’s arguments, even as she flies in the face of law with a pride that easily matches Creon’s. Antigone draws a distinction between divine law and human law, between the “great unwritten, unshakable traditions” and the edicts of individual rulers such as Creon. When Creon responds to Antigone’s recklessness, he speaks of breaking and taming her. Although, according to the Chorus, breaking and taming is what humans do to nature, it’s not clear that Creon is weaving the laws of the land and the justice of the god into his goal of breaking Antigone. Blood ties seem to mean nothing to Creon, who commits sacrilege against Zeus when he dismisses his blood tie to Antigone by saying that he would reject his entire family if they were huddled together at Zeus’s altar. He insists he would punish Antigone even if she were a closer blood relative. Creon’s rage at Antigone’s insolence entirely consumes him, and he acts with a rashness terrifying to all who have heard him claim to hold steady control of the “ship of state.” Creon’s anger is notably directed toward the fact that he is being challenged by women. When he first meets with Antigone, he says that if she gets away with her actions, she will be “the man” rather than him . And after he has condemned the sisters to death, he tells his guards to keep them from running loose and tie them up, so that they will act like women. In Creon’s view, Antigone has overstepped the bounds of her positions as a citizen and as a human being. Antigone, of course, has none of these worldly concerns. She is prepared to die for what she believes is the right action in the eyes of the gods. Ultimately man is helpless before fate and the will of the gods. Though in Sophocles’s version Creon only wishes to do good the curse on the house of Oedipus twists his good will to create tragedy and suffering. “Insatiable Death, wilt thou destroy me yet?”(Sophocles 223). We may well wonder what use judgment is given the limitations of human beings and the inescapable will of the gods. Perhaps the best explanation is that possessing wisdom and judgment means acknowledging human limitations and behaving piously so as not to actually call down the gods’ wrath. Humans must take a humble, reverential attitude toward fate, the gods, and the limits of human intelligence. At the end of the play, Creon shows he has learned this lesson at last when, instead of mocking death as he has throughout the play, he speaks respectfully of “death” heaping blows upon him. Even though Antigone exhibits a blamable pride and a hunger for glory, her transgressions are less serious than those of Creon. Antigone’s crime harms no one directly, whereas Creon’s mistakes affect an entire city. We learn from Teiresias that new armies are rising up in anger against Thebes because of Creon’s treatment of their dead. More important, Creon’s refusal to bury Polynices represents a more radical affront to human values than Antigone’s refusal to heed Creon’s ed...