Creon's Remorse and Release

Creon... again. Just thought he was interesting to analyze.

Years in the Underworld either gives people time to forget their lives, or to ponder them relentlessly. Those who spend time contemplating how they would have otherwise lived their lives go mad. They can only remember the consequences of the misjudgment, the tragedy itself, but the cause of the misjudgment itself is lost to time. I was becoming deranged as well, until I met the soul of an Athenian who knew my story. While in Elysium, the strange old man introduced himself as a playwright, and claimed to have written the story of my struggle with Antigone (which had apparently endured time). He recited the story to me and then left me to myself. I could reconsider my actions and how I had wronged. I understand that it was wrong to shame the gods, and I am apologetic for my actions because they cost me my wife and son. The gods had given me chances to reverse my decision with both Tiresias and Haemon, yet I spurned them both. I do not regret punishing Antigone, as she was a challenge to my authority, but instead feel remorse for my stubbornness and arrogance with which I acted and ignored appeals to reason.
My own words to Tiresias reflect my arrogance and true intentions at the time. I never intended to disobey the gods, but I became lost in my brash dogmatism: “Well I know, we can’t defile the gods- no mortal has the power. No, reverend old Tiresias, all men fall, it’s only human, but the wisest fall obscenely when they glorify obscene advice with rhetoric all for their own gain” (1155-1160). Tiresias had given me advice, but my immediate reaction was to accuse him of lying and telling prophecies for gold. My words to him were ironic, because they applied to me, not the prophet. My decision to refuse to bury Polynices was not an attempt to “defile” the gods, but a natural mistake that “all men” make. My fall came because I justified all action with a promise to defend the law. At the time I believed that an indecisive, weak leader gave way to anarchy, the “greater crime in all the earth” (752). Yet as I later learned, we must not be “senseless” (1393) to other’s advice also. Haemon also warned me not to be “so single-minded, self-involved, or assume the world is wrong and you are right” (787-793). The flaw in my leadership was not my desire to enforce the law, but rather my refusal to recognize its limits. Tiresias was not telling me that I should not have punished Antigone, but that my “pride was a crime” (1137) and that “a sense of judgment, wisdom is the greatest gift we have” (1165-1166). Tiresias himself told me that “All men make mistakes…but once the wrong is done, a man can turn his back on folly, misfortune too, if he tries to make amends” (1131-1135). I later did attempt to make amends, recognizing that I was “fighting a losing battle with necessity” (1231), but was too slow. We should be open to chances to correct our decisions, for we may never know when it is too late.
I wonder if I had already come to this conclusion after the deaths of Haemon and Eurydices, but I blamed fate instead of myself for their deaths. While I seemed to have been accepting that the “guilt is all mine” (1441), my final words before I leave the bodies of my family suggest otherwise. I cried out, yelling “whatever I touch goes wrong-once more a crushing fate’s come down upon my head” (1464-1465). I accuse fate of being the cause of what has “come down upon my head”, when fate had given me chances to change in front of Tiresias and Haemon. I prayed for my death, hoping that I would “never have to see another sunrise (1452), but I was not strong enough to finish myself and truly repent. I see that Oedipus was not “passionate”, “wild”, and “[hadn’t] learned to bend before adversity”, but was able to take hold of a chance to claim his guilt and responsibility.
At first I did not realize why the young man had referred to my story as a “tragedy”. A story of a stubborn, viscous tyrant hardly seems tragic. But I answered this question when I asked myself whether my struggle with Antigone reflected my true character. I set out to make Thebes a great city, and I thought that “my standards…[would] make our city great” (214). I find both comfort and sadness in that I realize my wrongdoing, but that I had the best of intentions. My downfall was not a lack of leadership, but too much of it. Pride was just a manifestation of my desire for our polis’s greatness. I am heartened by the fact that later generations realized that I was a good-natured person at heart. My downfall is traced back to my lofty expectations and goals for myself and Thebes. I find comfort in my motives, but realize that the smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.


"So it goes"