Creon's Fear of Anarchy

p. 94: Anarchy—

show me a greater crime in all the earth!

She, she destroys cities, rips up houses,

breaks the ranks of spearmen into headlong rout.

But the ones who last it out, the great mass of them

owe their lives to discipline. Therefore

we must defend the men who live by law,

never let some woman triumph over us.

Better to fall from power, if fall we must,

at the hands of a man—never be rated

inferior to a woman, never.

After sentencing Antigone to death for disobeying his order against burying Polynices, Creon advises Haemon to leave her and launches into a violent tirade against Antigone and Anarchy. To Creon, anarchy is the worst crime because it opposes the order that he is so desperately trying to achieve with his rule. Creon fears losing power especially because he is a tyrant, and his paranoia that the citizens of Thebes are plotting against him demonstrates his negative view of human nature and his contempt for his subjects. With his kingship still unstable with the recent war and family issues, Creon seeks any way for him to validate his rule by favoring the city or his family whenever it benefits him most. His rule comes from a balance between the city and the royal blood that gives him his title; however, he begins to see the city as an extension of himself and chooses to side with the state over his own family. With Antigone’s defiance of his ruling over Polynices’ body, Creon takes it as treachery against the state and thus, himself. He no longer regards Antigone as his niece, but as a traitor who is a danger to his city. In this passage, Creon personifies Anarchy as a woman (specifically referring to Antigone) that “destroys cities” and “rips up houses” (Sophocles 753). He believes in a fixed hierarchy, categorizing his thinking by attributing order, judgment, and the city to men and weakness and chaos to women. Antigone’s actions contradict this idea and Creon feels obligated to have her killed in order to prove that he is not a liar. He desires to be the type of man he praises and therefore be worthy to rule the city, but his hypocrisy and arrogant dismissal of the higher unwritten law of the gods that Antigone follows eventually leads to his tragic failure both as the head of state and the head of his family.