Circe

Throughout the book, prophecies are presented as fundamentally self-fulfilling; even actions taken to circumvent them end up completing them instead. This is seen in Circe’s references to Oedipus and characterized by Odysseus’ death. In both cases, the men kill their fathers. Athena does not want her favorite hero to die, so she threatens Telegonus’s life to protect Odysseus. This causes Circe to retrieve the tail of Trygon. Telegonus takes it to defend himself against Athena, and its poison kills Odysseus in a scuffle incited by Odysseus due to madness riled up by Athena. Athena is the architect of the death she sought to avoid, and Circe and Telegonus are equally unwilling accomplices. Circe observes and resents this irony:

The Fates were laughing at me, at Athena, at all of us. It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. The shining snare had closed, and my poor son, who had never harmed any man, was caught (291).

Pasiphaë announces a dark truth about the gods: they “love their monsters” (126). Although they look down upon anything that is not a greater god, monsters are a part of their religious ecosystem. Gods want worship and sacrifice, which humans give, and as Hermes points out, mortals in peril offer more prayers than satisfied ones. The monsters, then, provide a necessary level of encouragement for the mortals to worship the gods. They are also a means by which demigods can achieve glory: Without any monsters to fight, who would Heracles be? And who would offer sacrifices to the gods in the hopes of emulating him? This bitter truth explains why the gods allow even their favorites to suffer and choose not to intervene even as the Minotaur and Scylla take their followers’ lives. The limit is not in their ability to slay the beasts but in their desire to do so. As such, Pasiphaë’s expectation that the gods will not harm her for creating the Minotaur is proven right.

Several characters receive their heart’s desire only to be disappointed, or worse, subjected to the very hardship and suffering they strove to avoid. Perse wants to marry Helios to gain social advantage and notoriety, and she plans to bear him powerful children. Eventually she becomes known as the mother of witches, but then is forbidden to have any more children and is therefore married but cut off from her husband and the influence that comes with being his wife. Pasiphaë wants to marry a powerful son of Zeus and escape her family, but Minos proves to be an abusive, arrogant man. Medea leaves her father’s kingdom and marries Jason, but he divorces her. She ends up killing their children and returning to her father. Daedalus wished to escape Crete to give his son a better life, but Icarus dies in their escape. Odysseus wants to return to Ithaca, but when he does, he longs for adventure. He also wants more children, but his second son kills him. Telemachus wishes for his father to return from war, but Odysseus returns a bitter shell of a man who returns ruins his kingdom and his marriage. Telegonus wants to meet his father, but at their first meeting, Odysseus attacks him and Telegonus accidentally kills him.

This irony is especially apparent in Circe’s character arc. She wants freedom from her family but is exiled in solitude—without any meaningful relationships—for thousands of years. She wishes for Glaucos to be a god so they might marry, but in elevating him she gives him the ability to abandon her. She wants to ruin Scylla’s good looks but creates a monster that kills mortals. She wants to see Aeëtes again, but when he visits, it is only to blame and threaten her. Circe hopes for companionship but is raped by the mortals who finally visit her island. She longs for her child to be safe and unafraid but shields him so much that he cannot understand the danger he is in.