According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is a character, usually in a play, who evokes pity and terror in other characters and in the audience; tends to have a higher "moral value" than normal characters; suffers from hamartia, or a tragic defect; shows pride or excessive pride; and realizes his mistakes during the play. In the Greek plays Oedipus the King and Antigone, both by the famous Greek playwright Sophocles, the characters Oedipus, Antigone and Creon each face their own tragic experiences: Oedipus suffers the irony of the fulfillment of the prophecy of "the Child of Fortune”, despite his efforts to avoid it (Sophocles, 434-436); Antigone risks death because of her persistence in giving Polydice a proper burial (Sophocles, 317); Creon sinks into solitude and regret as the consequences of his decisions (Sophocles, 349-352). Of these three characters, however, Oedipus from Oedipus the King emerges as the strongest candidate for a tragic hero, according to Aristotle's definition, because of his prophesied misfortune; high moral value due to his position of authority; doubt in the abilities of the gods and excessive confidence in human judgment; stubbornly closed mind; and a progressive awareness of the truth. Antigone, Creon and Oedipus each evoke in their own way a feeling of pity and/or terror in the audience. In Antigone, the chorus, which sympathizes with Antigone for much of the play, arouses a sense of suspense and grief following Antigone's capture (Sophocles, 307). Additionally, Antigone laments her fate, arousing sympathy from the audience, by uttering the words: “They are laughing at me. Gods of Thebes! why / do you despise me / So, in front, / Alive, not yet struck by death? (...... middle of paper ...... gouging out one's own eyes in order to truly find wisdom. Each of these three tragic figures almost all meets Aristotle's definition of a "tragic hero ". evoke pity and/or terror among the audience or other characters in one form or another; they each have a higher moral value than ordinary people, because of their royal blood, they each suffer from their own hamartia, including Antigone's disregard for the rules when she enforces them; Creon's complacency and Oedipus' quick temper; they are all prideful and stubborn in everything; they do; and each character, with the exception of Antigone, eventually realizes his mistakes, these aspects of a tragic hero are presented more dramatically with the character of Oedipus than with Antigone or. Creon. Works Cited “Antigone” and “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles