"a hero asks more honor than a traitor." But he does not stop there: "While I live no woman shall rule me!" Creon's every contact exposes his egocentricity, despite his attempt to use law and order as his base. Creon's conscience fails, and his life and ego triumph in manifest terms. Antigone's conscience succeeds, and she dies. More, she would prefer to die:
As I live, in the midst of sorrows, death
For me, to face death is a trifling pain
That does not trouble me (Sophocles 14)
Events overtake and reverse the consequences of success and failure. All the characters' fates turn on Creon's pitting his authority against laws so old they have never been questioned except by him--respect for the dead, loyalty to family, individual conscience, love. It is Creon who eventually understands the horr
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