Antigone and the question of pride and

This past week in our English class we were asked to read the play Antigone by Sophocles. The play’s ultimate moral was what seemed to intrigue me the most, for I found it to be exceedingly important:

“Wisdom is by far the greatest part of joy,
and reverence toward the gods must be safeguarded.
The mighty words of the proud are paid in full
with mighty blows of fate,
and at long last
those blows will teach us wisdom.”

Before I could ponder the truth behind this statement, I contemplated Creon’s situation. Was Creon’s tragic flaw one of pride or simply skewed principles?

Upon thinking I found that Creon’s problem comes from a little bit of both those options, but weighs more heavily on his pride. I believe that Creon’s arrogance was fueled by his single minded nature, which saw only one alternative to ruling his kingdom. When his “my way or no way” method of ruling is defied by a woman, the claws come out and the instinct of pride takes over. His egotism hampers his ability to see the illogicality of his actions and thus brings the death of his son and wife, an event that finally cures Creon’s blindness towards reason. Although too late for actions, the tragic occurrence allows him to see his wrongdoings as well as shows the audience the toxicity of pride.

After analyzing the root of the problem, I considered its application to real life. How often do we see pride or skewed principles bring down people? Must we suffer in order to acquire wisdom? I came to the personal conclusion that pride is more often the source of downfall in plays than in life. This is not to say that pride is non-existing in real life but rather that we seldom see someone’s overly haughty nature become the downfall of them. Unfairly enough, excessive pride frequently goes unpunished. On the other hand, single mindedness when it comes to ruling is many times seen as the collapse of said ruler. In many but not all cases, the “bad guys” fall from power as a result of their oppressive laws. Consider if you will, Hitler. Although this may be a cliché example, Hitler can be seen as the quintessence of someone whose clearly inequitable laws eventually brought him down. As an answer to my second question, I think that suffering is not required for the process of obtaining wisdom, but is however often the case. We attain knowledge in many ways, but sometimes the more valuable pieces of wisdom come after some form of affliction. By affliction I don’t mean that death or utter desolation has to happen in order to gain from it. Even something as seemingly trivial in comparison such as getting caught doing something bad can teach us something valuable.

In the end I found Antigone to be an extremely thought provoking play whose morals can be applied in various situations.