Antigone

Creon is the brother-in-law of the former king, Oedipus, the uncle to Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles, and Polynices, and the father of Haemon. At the beginning of the play he has taken over the kingship of Thebes after the violent deaths of Eteocles and Polynices. Anouilh portrays Creon as the embodiment of his opinion of the French Vichy government under Nazi occupation: morally compromised, motivated by self-preservation, and insufficient to meeting the needs of his people.

Creon is a “grey-haired, powerfully built man” (15). The Chorus explains that as a young man, Creon was a rather unexceptional and perhaps even artistic person, as he “loved music, bought rare manuscripts, [and] was a kind of art patron” (15). However, Creon reveals a far sterner and crueler side to his character as king. He is obsessed with maintaining strict order and upholding his own authority, speaking contemptuously of the people of Thebes as a “rabble” and violating traditional religious and moral values in refusing to allow the burial of Polynices’ body. What is more, he admits to Antigone that he hopes Polynices’ body will serve as a gruesome warning to others—an admission that further reveals his taste for a fear-based, oppressive approach to governing Thebes. This transformation echoes what Anouilh perceives as Vichy France’s rejection of its legacy of revolution and democratic freedom in favor of collaboration with Nazism and cynical self-preservation.

Creon’s cold, calculating, and selfish attitude towards authority and the treatment of other people stands in marked contrast to Antigone’s conscience-driven ethos. While Creon frequently invokes the idea that his harsh edicts are necessary for the stability of the kingdom—"I must do [my job] properly" (50), he argues—he also reveals the hypocritical and self-serving nature of his use of power. When he realizes that Antigone is the one who has buried the body, he offers to cover up her crime by executing the three Guards instead so that Antigone can still marry Haemon and produce an heir for his bloodline. Creon’s willingness to use deception and arbitrary violence in breaking his own rules shows that he is motivated, first and foremost, by his own interests instead of an impartial exercising of justice. His unrepentant selfishness and belief that “Life is [ . . . ] nothing more than the happiness you get out of it” (57, italics mine) is the opposite of Antigone’s selfless, morality-driven approach to living.

By the play’s end, Creon has suffered an unexpected double bereavement in having lost both Haemon and his wife, Queen Eurydice.. However, just like Antigone, he remains unrepentant to the very end: mere moments after hearing of his wife’s death, he is already preparing for a cabinet meeting, suggesting that Creon’s greatest love is, and always has been, a love of unchecked power.

The Chorus is typically played by a group of people in traditional Greek Tragedies, but in Anouilh’s version of Antigone the Chorus is portrayed by a single actor instead. The Chorus is an omniscient player in the show, who knows every single role each of the characters must play in the story. He says, “I know them because it is my business to know them. That’s what a Greek Chorus is for” (14). In some ways, the Chorus acts almost as fate personified in the way he prophesies (or narrates) matter-of-factly what is going to happen to the people in the story.

The Chorus, for the most part, is a neutral party and does not usually directly interact with the other characters on stage. Towards the end, however, this changes. When Creon has Antigone carried away to prison to await her death, the Chorus rushes to him, saying “You are out of your mind, Creon. What have you done?” (60). The Chorus explicitly warns Creon not to kill Antigone, and even offers a eulogy of Antigone and her sacrifice at the play’s end. In this way, the Chorus helps to define and reinforce the play’s moral message.

Ismene is the beautiful, “gay and golden” (14) sister of Antigone. In the original play, Sophocles was not specific about which sister was younger and which was older. Anouilh makes a clear distinction, however, that Ismene is younger. She tells Antigone, “I may be younger than you are, but I always think things over, and you don’t” (23). She chides Antigone for rushing into action without thinking, which mirrors Creon’s critique of Oedipus. These two facets of her character—her beauty, and her pragmatism—keep her at odds with Antigone for much of the play. She desperately wants her sister to live, even if that means leaving the body of their brother in the streets to rot, which would mean Antigone turning completely against her own set of morals. Significantly, however, Ismene is ultimately won over by Antigone's moral reasoning: Ismene stands up to Creon in her sister’s defense, vowing to rebury Polynices’ body herself.

Haemon is the son of King Creon and Queen Eurydice, and is engaged to Antigone. When the Chorus introduces him, he says that Haemon “likes dancing, sports, competition [ . . . ] [and] women, too” (14). On the night he proposed to Antigone, he spent most of the evening dancing with Ismene, before seeking Antigone to ask for her hand instead.

The tragedy behind the love of Antigone and Haemon is that it was doomed from the start, but it is clear that what they do have is a real and steadfast love. Antigone says of her fiancé, “The Haemon I love is hard and young, and faithful and difficult to satisfy, the way I am” (57). Like Antigone, Haemon refuses to bend to his father’s will when his own morals are in jeopardy. He refuses to back down when Creon unjustly sentences Antigone to death, even attempting to murder Creon after Antigone commits suicide. Haemon misses, and ends up stabbing himself instead, with his body laid upon Antigone’s.