Circe: Imagery 3 key examples

Prometheus is finally being punished for giving mortals fire long ago. Zeus is still enraged by the way Prometheus put more power into mortals' hands. After keeping Prometheus imprisoned for a long time, Zeus has finally decided to tie him to a rock where an eagle will tear into his side and eat out his liver every day for eternity. First, however, Zeus will make an example of him in front of the Titans. He wants all of the Titans to know that if they ever threaten his power, they too will face unimaginable torture.

Even though this scene shows Prometheus inside Helios's halls, being publicly tortured and humiliated, Circe's chosen similes draw on imagery from nature. It is almost as though Prometheus is already outside on the rock. There, he is accompanied only by the eagle and none of the spiteful gods who stand here gawking at his pain. The whip crack sounds like "oaken branches breaking," and the sharp breaths of the wincing crowd "[hiss] like water on hot rocks." The whip carves a "gash...in his side long as [Circe's] arm," an image that directly evokes the infamous daily punishment Prometheus has not begun to endure just yet. Prometheus does not look like a man being publicly humiliated, but rather like a man who is standing still and strong as nature rages brutally around him. Cruel whispers cannot knock him over.

Circe admires Prometheus's stoic manner throughout his punishment. She learns that he refused the opportunity to beg for a lighter punishment, preferring to quietly accept his lot and maintain his dignity. She defies the rules by speaking to him after the torture is over. She even brings him nectar. Their conversation, during which he tells her that "not every god need be the same," is formative to her. She remembers it often and tries constantly to imitate Prometheus's quiet strength and indifference to the cruelty inflicted on her. When Helios exiles her, she realizes that she, like Prometheus, was already alone in the wilderness even when she was surrounded by gods in her father's halls. However, it takes hundreds of years for her to learn the truth of her uncle's advice and become a person who can stand calmly by her own convictions, no matter how anyone tries to shake her.

Once Trygon has agreed to give Circe his tail, she is the one who begins hesitating. To cut the body of this immensely powerful creature, inflicting on him an eternity of pain, seems both unnatural and antithetical to Circe's values. She desperately wants to break free of the cycle of violence into which she was born. Cutting Trygon's tail is not an act of self-defense, as killing violent men is. Circe will not be able to take this decision back.

When she finally does cut the tail, she is struck not by how difficult it is to slice through, but rather by how easily it comes away with only a little pressure from her knife. All of the imagery of the passage is lighter and more beautiful than Circe expects it to be. The tail should be the heaviest thing Circe has ever held in her hand, but instead it is "nearly weightless." Instead of gory and horrifying, the detached tail looks "iridescent," like some pearl she has merely picked up off the ocean floor. The sand "whispers" instead of screaming, as witnesses to this crime ought to do. Trygon's golden blood even makes the water "shimmer," lighting it up instead of darkening it like blood usually would. Taking Trygon's tail turns out to be far easier and more anticlimactic than Circe ever could have suspected.

Still, Circe knows that she has hurt Trygon for her own gain. This knowledge in itself would be overwhelming, but she nearly buckles under the tension between the horror she feels within and the quiet beauty all around her. It makes her think about the "bones of a thousand years" that she walks on every day without noticing, the accumulated bodies that have piled up in the wake of her and other gods' violent quests for power. Trygon leaves Circe with a simple reminder of her own agency: if she cannot stand the world she lives in, it is up to her to "make another" in which sacrifices are honored and violence is not such a casual part of life that it goes unnoticed.

These images invite the reader's senses into the scene, which is a bit of a farewell to the beautiful island Circe has long thought of as her home. The similes emphasize not the sadness, but the possibility of the moment: Circe's world is expanding as she looks out to the ocean and up to the stars. On the ocean, Circe will have the chance to weave her own future. If she reaches up, she might be able to pluck a star from the sky like a ripe pear. The world is finally hers to do with what she will.

The exchange that follows immediately after the two similes adds another layer of complexity to them. Telemachus tells Circe that he is angry with her for failing to see how different he is from his father. Circe is taken aback. At first, her hopes for a fresh new life are dashed. All her attention is redirected from the expansive sea and sky to the uncomfortable sensation of conflict as "blood rose stinging to my cheeks." Her world shrinks once more to the mistakes she has made. However, she and Telemachus go on to have a vulnerable exchange. At the end of it, they decide that Telemachus will accompany Circe on her quest to free Scylla. This kind of relationship repair is new to Circe, and it is something she has always wished was possible for her. It allows her and Telemachus to get to know one another and themselves better than they ever have, eventually leading to her decision to become mortal and spend her life with him. The conflict that first brought Circe's hope to a crashing halt thus turns out to be the first ripe pear she picks off the branch of possibility that is bending down to meet her. With Telemachus, she deliberately weaves a future of their own making.