Freshman Essay

Done. My Freshman Essay is done. You can either click the link to download it or read below. I’ve decided to post it online, but with something so long (fifteen typed pages) it may be better to have it in a larger document format. I’m pleased with the beginning, but the ending doesn’t convey what I really wanted to say. It’s not a work shining with beauty or intense promise, but it’s something into which I invested a large amount of time and thought. Unfortunately, the context of the assignment didn’t allow for most of that thought to come through. I know I have immensely more than fifteen pages worth of opinions and questions about Haemon alone without even beginning to touch on the other characters of Antigone. Here’s my Freshman Essay:

The Tragedy of
Haemon

Of Sophocles’s Antigone

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Philip Thomas Mohr
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Spring 2007

When reading Sophocles’s Antigone, we have a choice: we can either approach it with a view to allegorical symbols, seeing characters representing some bold archetypes, interpreting the play as having a grand discernable message at its conclusion; or we can see the characters as people, and let ourselves wonder how and why the things they do, heinous or beautiful, are common to our own experiences despite our removal from that ancient Theban world. I can’t help but be enticed by the second choice.
It is not fair to say that one character is a more suitable subject for inquiry. But I am most intrigued by Haemon, who is easily lost in the confusion of battle that Sophocles builds between Antigone and Creon to such extremes. Too often he is brushed aside as a foolish and passionate teenager, or as the victim of Creon’s injustice and a martyr alongside his beloved fiancée—considered a relatively inconsequential character. In truth Haemon is very real, only “inconsequential” insofar as he is dwarfed by the colossal arguments and circumstances of the drama. But who of us is not dwarfed by the world? Hoping to preserve this sort of individuality and smallness in comparison with the world, I think it’s best to begin the inquiry of his character by stripping him of archetypal labels and allegorical stereotypes. Simply, he is Haemon—prince of Thebes, the only son of King Creon, engaged to the beautiful daughter and half-sister of the tragic former king. At first, only this much may be admitted. Throughout our inquiry, “characters of opinion”—personified interpretations of the text—will appear to lead us through the history of this tragic young man’s life and death, and we, as the Chorus of this inquiry, will weigh their thoughts against each other in the pursuit of Haemon’s true character.
Having set out those premises and our method of inquiry, we must then acknowledge where this pursuit will lead us. Because we cannot presume to see the mysterious innermost parts of a person and his thoughts, we must resign to examining his words and actions as a sort of testament to what is unseen. To delve into the heart of Haemon is, inexorably, to delve into questions of his relationship with Creon and Antigone, and, most centrally, questions of his death. The most prominent question pertains to Haemon’s suicide—particularly asking why. When we ask this, we are really asking a twofold question in the realm of human behavior. Why he acted can be understood as (1) the end for which he acted, or his intention, and (2) whatever external influences provoked the act. When considering that distinction, we needs must ask whether those two things can be different accounts. Is the act the sole responsibility of the person acting? Is there justifiably any other thing beside the person’s will causing the act? To what extent can we differentiate between action and reaction, and what implication does that have on a person’s responsibility for what he does? The last question is the most compelling and relevant to the present inquiry. Therefore, in addition to an examination of Haemon’s character, we will also inquire into his responsibility toward himself as his own slayer, seeking to determine whether he was acting or reacting and asking about the implications of that determination. Let’s introduce the first character of opinion, the Cynic.

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Judging by the progression of Haemon’s dialogue with Creon, it is most clear that the youth was fully responsible for his own actions and therefore condemnable, because of his rebellion, which was made perfect in his suicide. Haemon approached his father feigning submission, and none can deny his words seemed full of loyalty:

O father, I am thine, and I will take
Thy wisdom as the helm to steer withal.
Therefore no wedlock shall by me be held
More precious than thy loving governance. (Greek lines 636–639, Storr)

His language, however, is infested with conditions. He confessed that he desired to be obedient to Creon’s good judgment (γνώμη ’έχων χρηστός), and his allegiance to Antigone is not greater than the king’s noble leading (καλως ‘ηγούμενος), but the extent of his loyalty outside of those parameters, which were subject to his own judgment, remains a mystery. Those words, in a reply to Creon’s assumption that he came on Antigone’s behalf—how much more suspect in context! If the Chorus of Elders and Creon had a doubt in their minds about the youth’s intentions, and if the assurance Haemon gave was thus conditional, it is conceivable that there may be a deception, or at least deliberate manipulation, at work in this confession to his father. If Haemon would really only submit to what is morally good and philosophically beautiful, he at least had no appeal to naïveté. In the larger scheme of the dialogue, it seems likely that Haemon wanted to stress his familial loyalty to a sound-minded father with hopes later of arguing that his father’s judgment concerning Antigone was anything but sound. Though Haemon said,

’Tis not for me to say thou errest, nor
Would I arraign thy wisdom, if I could (685–f.),

he immediately added,

And yet wise thoughts may come to other men
And, as thy son, it falls to me to mark
The acts, the words, the comments of the crowd. (687–689)

And then, giving us good grounds to consider him intentionally deceptive, he said, “Wert not my father, I had said thou err’st” (755)—the protasis of that statement being meaningless. Creon had no choice but to suspect his son of some treachery, thinking perhaps he had been incited either by the masses or his fanatical fiancée. He rejected the foundation of the dialogue as being between a father and son, and therefore reduced his son’s position to that no greater than a beardless boy approaching a prudent and wise elder (ref. 726–f.). Haemon came up against the seemingly insurmountable custom of an elder’s authority and wisdom, and he recognized that he must employ another argument.
His next tactic against Creon was to act as an advocate for the Theban people before their king (ref. 730–741), prompted perhaps by Creon’s connection between a father’s authority and a sovereign’s (ref. 659–662). This ploy, however, was even more short-lived. It was doomed to fail from the beginning, because of the manner of the argument. If Haemon had failed to change the mind of his father by suggesting him to be unwise, how dull he was to think that he could sway a king by suggesting him to be unjust in the eyes of the subjected people! It was a duplicitous criticism, and Creon’s response is no surprise.
Seeing his failure, Haemon resorted to nothing short of slander with a snide remark: “As monarch of a desert thou wouldst shine” (741). What was once a dialogue between a political advocate and a king became, in Haemon’s mind, one between a victim and a tyrant. Creon is then made certain of his son’s advocacy not for the people as much as for Antigone, and he maintained this accusation throughout the remainder of their dialogue (ref. 740, 746, 748, 756).
Having been so hopelessly exposed as a rebel sympathizer, he became plain about his own rebellion and made an argument eerily similar to that of his condemned fiancée (ref. 450–457), himself declaring to Creon, “Thou spurn’st the due of Heaven” (745). In Creon’s mind, this appeal to the gods clearly conjoined his son’s cause with Antigone’s and set the stage for similar condemnation. Having failed to convict his father of any paternal foolishness or political injustice, Haemon employed this as the only argument Creon could not answer.
As abovementioned, it is clear that Haemon was not naïve, and now this view of his dialogue with Creon makes a powerful suggestion of deliberate, plotted rebellion. Before Haemon approached his father he knew what had happened, he knew the opinions of the Theban people, he knew his own opinions, and he also knew what his father wanted to hear; and he masqueraded as a lover of wisdom and justice to further his agenda to either win his fiancée’s case or punish his father for any injury against her. As he stormed away from his father in what the Chorus described as an “angry haste” (766), he exclaimed,

Never shalt thou again
Behold my face hereafter. Go, consort
With friends who like a madman for their mate (763–765)—

a statement in stark contrast to his initial words, “O father, I am thine.”
Being thus guilty of rebellion, it is inadmissible that Haemon was not solely responsible for his own tragic end. Haemon was not a victim of circumstance! It is apparent that his will was not submitted to Creon’s, and he had his own agenda, about which Creon and the Chorus of Elders were correct in their suspicions, as is made obvious from the progression of the boy’s behavior. Speaking alone with Creon before Haemon’s entrance, the Chorus of Elders eloquently chimed in,

Hither comes in angry mood
Haemon, latest of thy brood;
Is it for his bride he’s grieved,
Of her marriage-bed deceived,
Doth he make his mourn for thee,
Maid forlorn, Antigone? (627–630)

Creon came to answer this question with a resounding “Yes!” when he called his son a “woman’s slave” (756, Fagles ). The only way Haemon could be called a “victim” is if it is admitted that he fell into a lady-spider’s web. His sonly and political façade could not disguise his utter ruin at the hands of lovesickness for the accursed Antigone. His agenda was nothing more than to free his fiancée and find a pardon for her crimes against the king’s edict. With such a firm intention he set about in his work, and he alone wrought his fate.

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For now we will let the Cynic rest, but we must not let ourselves be persuaded so easily. We have gained valuable insight into the character of Haemon—having been exposed to his potentially treacherous words and suspicious behavior, and receiving a possible motive for rebellion—but the account is not yet satisfactory. What doubt arises from the Cynic’s interpretation of the situation is what was addressed last: intention. How realistic is it for us to explain away Haemon’s life and death, maintaining that he was solely responsible, if what he desired in life were not in direct agreement with how he died. Let’s look at an analogy for a moment.
According to the Cynic, Haemon was like the shooter in a game of pool. Should we treat cause and effect very simply and assume the shooter is a skilled player of the game, whatever the shooter aims at will be moved in the proper direction, toward the goal assigned by the shooter. If the shooter wants to hit the three-ball into the side pocket, he will hit the cue ball, the cue ball will hit the three-ball, and the three-ball will accomplish his intention by going into the side pocket. We would never claim that the three-ball put itself in the pocket, nor even that the cue ball put it there; the shooter is held responsible for his shot, and his shot is entirely founded in his intention.
If we keep this line of thinking, we find the Cynic claiming that Haemon, insofar as his skill allows, was intentionally aiming for his own suicide from the beginning. And though it was admitted before that Haemon may have had his intentions set toward helping Antigone, at this point it is absurd to assume that he wanted only to join her in death while noting that he had spent most of his energy pleading with his father to spare her, as the Cynic admitted. Though this is not a full disproof of the Cynic’s argument, it is apparent that there is more to be admitted on Haemon’s behalf. Let’s allow the Idealist to combat the current sway of our inquiry.

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Interestingly, the very people who would be expected to condemn Haemon after his suicide are those who greatly challenged this notion of Haemon’s sole responsibility. Eurydice and the Chorus of Elders were all quick to accuse Creon of responsibility, no longer for Antigone’s death, but for Haemon’s; and Creon himself could not escape some sense of shame after the deed was done. “Alas my son,” cried the king,

Life scarce begun,
Thou wast undone.
The fault was mine, mine only, O my son! (1266–1269, Storr)

To that the Chorus responded, “Too late thou seemest to perceive the truth” (1270). And then a messenger reported that Eurydice cursed her husband before she killed herself, calling him “the slayer of her child” (1305). Among Creon’s final words at the play’s closing were explicit confessions:

I am the guilty cause. I did the deed,
Thy murderer. Yea, I guilty plead (1317–f.)
. . .
Away with me, a worthless wretch who slew
Unwitting thee, my son, thy mother too. (1339–1341)

This guilt upon Creon can be found before the suicides. It is apparent that his crimes against the gods—found in the selfsame appeals made by Haemon and Antigone—were deserving of some punishment, as proclaimed by the oracle of Teiresias (ref. 1064–1067). With the divine judgment issued by the prophet, an interesting twist was illumined to defeat the theory that Haemon was a plotting rebel in his conversation with Creon; simply, the boy was right. His appeal to the gods may have been his last ditch effort to persuade his father, but the sentiment was not false. It is conceivable that he was truthful in those opening words of loyalty, and he desired to hear good judgment and obey noble governance from his father once again. His heart was torn not only because his fiancée was sentenced unjustly, but also because his own father was lost and tangled helplessly in injustice and ignorance. Perhaps, he thought, both could be saved—one from unjust punishment, and the other from his own sin. When he said, “I see thee wrongfully perverse” (743), he was genuinely concerned for Creon. And though Creon may be correct to claim that Haemon’s stubborn appeal was motivated by his love for his fiancée, Haemon asserted that he also pled for his sake, for himself, and for the nether gods who had been offended (ref. 748–f.).
As abovementioned, it is apparent that Creon’s crimes against Antigone and Polyneices—and consequently against fair Justice and the gods—warranted a punishment. With this in view it is clear that Haemon has little responsibility in his death. The basis for this argument is not to something as convoluted as fate; instead, we must understand both Antigone and Haemon as victims of injustice at Creon’s hand. Both the youths held their allegiance to the gods above human authorities, and it was Creon who usurped a power that did not belong to him, according to Teiresias, when he challenged the sacred rites and set his own authority as supreme over the gods’ (ref. 1072–f.). Antigone and Haemon would rather die in their protest of injustice, even by their own hands, than suffer the sins that pollute the world.

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That is another difficult, albeit somewhat persuasive, interpretation of Haemon’s character and the question of responsibility. The Idealist has proffered a variation of the abovementioned “pool table” analogy.
Instead of Haemon being a shooter in a game of pool, he is now hypothesized to have been more like, say, the eight-ball, whereas Creon was the shooter because he had power manifest in his position of authority. Again treating cause and effect very simply, we can assign the full brunt of the outcome back upon the shooter, proclaiming therefore that Haemon is what we call a “victim of circumstance,” much to the Cynic’s displeasure. But this is not a realistic portrayal of the situation. In the first version of the analogy, the notion of intention became a perplexing admission. We may question the first analogy because Haemon’s intentions did not come to pass, and likewise we can question the current variation, because what Haemon did was not what Creon intended.
As an alternative, to help explain the conundrum of Haemon as a wayward eight-ball, perhaps we can think of Haemon as a malformed ball, the course of which held some tendency to move off the shooter’s target. But this would suggest some flaw or permanent tendency within his character, again depending upon something like fate, which the Idealist has rejected. This analogy does not seem at all sufficient yet, but it is closer to the heart of our question as to whether Haemon is acting or reacting, responsible for his suicide or a victim to external, overpowering influence.
The last idea of the “malformed ball” raises an interesting question: Would Haemon have consider himself thus? Whereas the first two forms of the analogy put all the blame on the shooter, either Haemon or Creon, this seems to offer some alternative by denying the simplicity of cause and effect in human behavior. It is not realistic to assume anyone to be the sole cause of either his own doom or another’s, because if he is cause, then there is nothing to which his actions are subject beyond his intentions alone; and it is plain to see that these intentions are interrupted by something.
The Cynic and the Idealist have both centered their arguments on the events and speeches preceding Haemon’s death, but the entire inquiry is lacking the most essential piece of the puzzle about Haemon’s character and responsibility. Perhaps how he killed himself will give us the most solid interpretation to answer why as asked in the introduction of the inquiry. Let’s have the play’s Messenger, a firsthand witness of Haemon’s death, testify to the truth of the matter.

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Haemon’s suicide was a tremendous and tragic affair, riddled with confusion and passion. This was what is most obvious: the youth, seeing Antigone lifeless, decided to slay himself because he was “raging mad with his father for the death” (1177, Fagles2). And no more succinct answer could be expected. But is it believable in its entirety? No, and that is not the complete account. According to the testimony heard by the queen—“the perfect truth, omitting not one word” (1193, Storr)—in the tomb were Antigone and Haemon with

his arms flung around her waist,
clinging to her, wailing for his bride,
dead and down below, for his father’s crimes
and the bed of his marriage blighted by misfortune. (1223–1225, Fagles)

Notice that his lamentation was threefold. And it is reasonable to suspect his suicide was caused by his lamentation, or more probably that both are at least effects from the same cause. But even that is not a complete testimony, because the youth was also apparently “wroth with himself” (1235, Storr) when he lashed out at his father and finally finished the deed in his own flesh.
Haemon was infuriated with his father, bewailing his dead fiancée and his father’s deeds and his cursed marriage, and provoked to anger by his own misdeeds. It must be admitted that the last of these conditions is undeniably generated by the first, because his anger against himself is only announced after he failed to exact his revenge upon Creon; however, it seems fair to list it among the factors in which his suicidal choice was saturated. All of this is briefly admitted to emphasize the complication of this young man’s situation.
From a third-person perspective, Haemon was not capable of being a rational person in the midst of the gargantuan battle between Creon and Antigone. Despair alone could be enough to drive a person to end his life, and coupled with hatred and self-loathing, perhaps it is wont, this served a recipe for death. Haemon’s final act illustrates the chaos within him; and speculation here concerning his thoughts and rationale can be considered accurate, simply because the scene was so dramatic:

The son glared at him with tiger eyes,
Spat in his face, and then, without a word,
Drew his two-hilted sword and smote, but missed
His father flying backwards. Then the boy,
Wroth with himself, poor wretch, incontinent
Fell on his sword and drove it through his side
Home, but yet breathing clasped in his lax arms
The maid, her pallid cheek incarnadined
With his expiring gasps. So there lay
The two corpses, one in death. (1231–1240)

The gruesome image of his death is overwhelmed by the utter blackness of his final actions. Here we do not have evidence of a man wholly battered by the waves of the world, nor a man fully in control of his destiny. He was conscious and was able to take aim with a view of the scene around him, but he was also panicked and heartbroken, having his hope lost with the maiden. Whether he aimed to save Antigone only or to save both her and Creon from a tragic end, when he lost the one he considered his failure complete; the death of Antigone secured Creon’s demise, as the law of the gods would prescribe, and confirmed to Haemon the perfection of his hopelessness. To him, her death was irredeemable. Hopelessness brought forth sorrow, and sorrow rage. Seeing his father entering into the place—a sacred place where he held his beloved in his arms as if in fulfillment of their marriage—and knowing how the king had spurned the will of the gods, he could only be full of contempt and agony. His fiancée had suffered Creon’s injustice, and the punishment was obvious: blood for blood. But, because he was unable to draw out the blood from Creon’s body, he resolved to spill the blood running through his own veins.

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This dramatic interpretation is born from the most dramatic and intense moment in Haemon’s life. And as odd as it seems to admit this, the single event of his death is the most essential part of his character. Everything he said and did leading up to that point was put to the test by his end; this “testing by the end,” of course, has been the trend we have dealt with in our question of intention and provocation—that is, the question of action and reaction. If a person is solely responsible for all his action, his intentions match the end of his actions. But, contrarily by induction, because a person’s intentions do not match the end, there needs must be some influence beyond him provoking a particular, unintentional reaction.
We can predict that the Cynic would agree with the former conclusion, correlating Haemon’s rebellious attitude with his attempt to kill his father; however, the Idealist’s rebuttal would appeal to Haemon’s right sense of justice and the reaction demanded by suffering anything contrary to that sense. The Messenger’s melodrama, though, seems to tie these together, and in the context of the emotional human struggle these two ideas are eerily married.
It is obvious that Antigone, Creon, Haemon, Eurydice, and the Chorus of Elders maintain a principle of responsibility in the midst of the confusion. Let us, then, maintain the abovementioned “pool table” analogy, albeit with adjustments. If people are responsible, as the Cynic claims, let all be shooters on the table, which represents life with its plethora of limits, circumstances, and various ends. For a moment remove the cue ball. The shooters aim, some desiring the same hole, others looking to bounce a shot off the walls, and others with a frustrate view of anything being willing to take a wild shot into the middle to break up the clutter. This is where the analogy becomes very complicated, and also most accurate: Who admits that the circumstances of the world do not at least seem complex and manifold? Let’s remove some of the complication and only look at Haemon, Creon, and Antigone. In some way, regardless of describing how the two players came to this conclusion, Antigone went headlong toward the pocket of her grave. Haemon, chasing after her, rushed into his father, and the clash between them brought them both to a standstill. Neither persuading the other to repent, Haemon rushed around his father again toward Antigone. Enter the cue ball, suddenly. Teiresias approached Creon with ferocious power, sped on by a mysterious shooter somewhere beyond the realm of perceptible things, and hit him toward the grave of Antigone on a course to interrupt his son. Haemon arrived at the pocket to find Antigone already swallowed into its blackness. When his father came, he identified him as the cause of Antigone’s demise and sought to push him into the same end, but Creon could not be pushed down that particular pocket; instead, having failed to throw his father in, Haemon bounced off and slipped into the same blackness to follow his fiancée to the grave.
Thus it seems. Haemon called the shots in his own life, not entirely bereft of perception and the ability to react in particular ways to particular stimuli, but, as the analogy shows, he could not choose one stimulus from another. Though he was born into an unjust world of uncontrollable circumstances, this did not necessarily make him a “victim” of circumstance! We cannot let the inquiry be lost in some grand generalization, because the true character of Haemon is yet at stake.
Was his suicide, to him, a deliberate act of rebellion or a necessary reaction to oppression? Was his rage caused by his own passion or was it a reaction to injury? Did his lamentation come from an intense love for Antigone herself or an equally intense sorrow for his lost hope of a happy marriage? Was it deliberation or disposition that effected his suicide?
Haemon was a young man who took his death into his own hands. Though he likely saw Antigone as a victim, he also saw her worth defending, and anyone who thinks himself truly a victim of circumstance can see no purpose in defense. He was active in his life and in his death. We are not coming to some cosmic conclusion that proves or disproves fate. Our inquiry is concerned with Haemon, who, were he at all a reasonable person, acted in such a way as to demonstrate his defiance of circumstance. He refused to submit to Creon and to the greater injustice, and in his suffering he derived meaning in a life otherwise hopeless and uncontrollable.
In his character is found a great many sorrows. This is the tragedy of Haemon: while he believed in justice and fought against the unjust, and while he began with hope for the future, he ended with despair. He hopelessly accepted the sword meant for another, and despite his longsuffering on behalf of justice, he made a choice that showed the world he had run out of options—a choice that proclaimed he would never have a choice again.

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