Play Including Creon example essay topic

In one of the three plays of Sophocles, "The Antigone" we come across a character who is trying to change the mind of a king who is his own father. In the middle of the play the character Haemon comes and tells Creon", I beg you, do not be unchangeable: Do not believe that you alone can be right. The man who thinks that, The man who maintains that only he has the power to reason correctly, the gifts to speak, the soul - a man like that, when you know him, turns out empty. It is not reason never to yield to reason!" Haemon tells his father this because he realizes that Creon is not going to change his mind on executing Antigone. Haemon realizes that the approach his father has taken towards this situation was wrong and that he is also wrong with his final decision. Antigone is the women who Haemon is suppose to marry and she is sent to die by Creon because she broke the rules that Creon set.

The rule of the state that Antigone broke was that she gave her brother Polynices a proper burial knowing that Creon declared him as an enemy of the state and did not deserve the burial. Antigone had a right to bury her brother and she did do the right thing by going against Creon's rules. Not everyone in this play including Creon did not realize what the life of Antigone was like as she was growing up. Knowing that your father was also your own brother must have brought plenty of pain in her life. Throughout the entire play the audience knows what the life of Antigone was like and know all the pain she has had in her life. Most of her family has already past away and all the family she had left were her two brothers and her sister.

Once she realizes that her two brothers are also gone she wants to give them both the proper burial that they deserve because they to experienced the same amount of pain that Anitgone faced in the course of her life. Antigone probably wanted to give both her brothers a proper burial because she never got to give her mother or her father one. Her dad went into exile after finding out that he killed his own father and interacted in sexual intercourse with his own mother. Her mother committed suicide after finding out that she interacted in sexual intercourse with her son.

Giving both her brothers a proper burial was more of a duty than something she wanted to do. In the quote that was mentioned earlier, Hamemon does make a very powerful point. To summarize this quote Hamemon tells his father not to be so unchangeable and a man who is unchangeable will sooner or later be empty. What Haemon tells Creon is not any other line in this play, this line is telling the audience what will happen in the future. Although all who read the play know that Creon ends up being empty because he has no one to live with. Hamemon kills himself after seeing Antigone dead and Creon wife also commits suicide after finding out that her son has killed himself.

This line by Hamemon is not only a forecast of what happens in the end of the play but is also true in the real world. Those who believe that only they are right, the person who believes that only he or she has the power to reason correctly always ends up being empty. Earlier this semester we learned that Aristotle believed that man is a social animal and that no man is an island. Creon is an exception in this play because he has made himself an island by not taking the advice of other people.

If Creon would have taken advice from his son, he would not have ended up being empty like Hamemon had said to him. In conclusion I believe that this is one of the strongest quotes in this play. The reason I say this is because Hamemon who is a young character is telling his father who is a king the right thing to do. One would think that a king has all the right answers all the time but it turns out not to be true.

We also learn in this line that Creon can take himself out of the spot of being empty at the end of the play if he were only to listen to his son. At the end we realize that the weakness that Creon had was what doomed many people in this play.