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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Snakes:
Snakes, both real and metaphorical, are a motif in the novel. Miller uses them to comment on power and monstrosity. In Chapter 1, Circe compares her siblings to snakes when they tease her about her father's cows:
I must have had an odd look on my face, for Perses and Pasiphaë began to snicker from their couch. “Did you swallow a frog?”
“No,” I said.
This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales. My sister said, “And how were our father’s golden heifers?”
“Beautiful.”
Perses laughed. “She doesn’t know! Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?”
“Never,” my sister said.
Perses and Pasiphaë delight in Circe's discomfort as they reveal to her that Helios's cows are so beautiful because he breeds with them himself. They are literally divine cows. Circe is disgusted both by this revelation and by her siblings' behavior, which borders on incest to match Helios's bestiality. She compares them to snakes to emphasize the way they both frighten and unsettle her. They always seem to be wrapped around each other, a two-headed monster waiting to strike.
When Prometheus is brought to Helios's palace for his punishment, he is accompanied by a Fury with snakes for hair. The snakes are part of the Fury's monstrous presentation, which everyone including Circe finds intimidating. However, importantly, this is one of Circe's first encounters with a woman powerful enough to imprison a man and command the attention of a full court. Unlike Pasiphaë, whose snakelike nature is intertwined with Perses's, the Fury shows Circe an example of a woman who can be snakelike all on her own.
By the time Circe meets Hermes in Chapter 8 and begins an affair with him, she has begun to see metaphorical snakes everywhere. She describes her relationship with Hermes as one between two snakes:
He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.
By this point, Circe is no longer disgusted by "poisonous," snake-like behavior—or at least, she does not reject it like she once did. Instead, she seems to take for granted that everyone slithers through the world with a low profile until the time comes to strike at others. She even thinks of herself in these terms, as an opportunistic creature who will readily lash out even at those closest to her if they hurt her. Becoming a snake is how she survives. She even begins to forgive her siblings for doing the same.
Thinking of herself as a snake eventually helps Circe justify her practice of turning sexually violent men into pigs and killing them. In Chapter 15 she writes:
There was always a leader. He was not the largest, and he need not be the captain, but he was the one they looked to for instruction in their cruelty. He had a cold eye and a coiling tension. Like a snake, the poets might say, but I knew snakes better by then. Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.
Circe hates herself for killing the men, but she tells herself that at least her violence is "honest." She strikes only when provoked. The men, on the other hand, perform sexual violence for fun. They are the true monsters.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Supplication:
Supplication, or begging on bent knees before a powerful figure, is a motif in the novel. An early instance occurs in Chapter 1, when Circe imagines the execution of astronomers on days when Helios (i.e. the sun) stays out late on a whim:
I imagined [those astronomers], low as worms, sagging and bent. Please, they cried, on bony knees, it wasn’t our fault, the sun itself was late.
The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones. It is blasphemy to say so, you must die! And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two.
The astronomers are experts on the heavens. Circe knows that they are in fact correct that sometimes, Helios stays in the sky later than they could have predicted he would. However, when the astronomers' predictions turn out to be wrong, they must throw themselves on their knees and beg their kings not to kill them. Their pleas are almost never successful.
Circe is sickened by the idea that Helios can play with mortals' lives like this and that it can amuse him to do so. He is at the top of what she calls the "great chain of fear," wielding power over everyone below him. The kings are middle-men, holding their own power over the astronomers but still beholden to Helios and the rest of the gods. They believe that they are serving Helios by killing the "blasphemous" astronomers. It is their own form of supplication to Helios. And yet, all they are doing is reinforcing a hierarchy in which anyone who makes a mistake is doomed to throw themself on the ground before the next most powerful person. They might easily be next, and their only defense would be to beg.
In Chapter 11, Pasiphaë criticizes Circe for throwing herself on her knees before their father, time and time again:
“It is funny,” she said, “that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father’s halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.”
Pasiphaë points out that whenever Circe "shrank and simpered" before Helios, it only made it easier for him to keep her down. This moment is the start of Circe's realization that by falling to their knees before those who hold power over them, she and the astronomers alike are in fact presenting their necks to the axes waiting to fall on them. The "great chain of fear" operates best when it is being reinforced like this, both from the top and from the bottom. Pasiphaë has always seemed more powerful than Circe in part because she refuses to kneel before Helios. Still, she reinforces her power through cruelty. Circe's great dilemma in the book is how to protect herself without engaging in either undue cruelty or undue supplication.
Related Themes:
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Snakes:
Covered in "Chapter 1 Explanation and Analysis—Snakes"
Snakes, both real and metaphorical, are a motif in the novel. Miller uses them to comment on power and monstrosity. In Chapter 1, Circe compares her siblings to snakes when they tease her about her father's cows:
I must have had an odd look on my face, for Perses and Pasiphaë began to snicker from their couch. “Did you swallow a frog?”
“No,” I said.
This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales. My sister said, “And how were our father’s golden heifers?”
“Beautiful.”
Perses laughed. “She doesn’t know! Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?”
“Never,” my sister said.
Perses and Pasiphaë delight in Circe's discomfort as they reveal to her that Helios's cows are so beautiful because he breeds with them himself. They are literally divine cows. Circe is disgusted both by this revelation and by her siblings' behavior, which borders on incest to match Helios's bestiality. She compares them to snakes to emphasize the way they both frighten and unsettle her. They always seem to be wrapped around each other, a two-headed monster waiting to strike.
When Prometheus is brought to Helios's palace for his punishment, he is accompanied by a Fury with snakes for hair. The snakes are part of the Fury's monstrous presentation, which everyone including Circe finds intimidating. However, importantly, this is one of Circe's first encounters with a woman powerful enough to imprison a man and command the attention of a full court. Unlike Pasiphaë, whose snakelike nature is intertwined with Perses's, the Fury shows Circe an example of a woman who can be snakelike all on her own.
By the time Circe meets Hermes in Chapter 8 and begins an affair with him, she has begun to see metaphorical snakes everywhere. She describes her relationship with Hermes as one between two snakes:
He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.
By this point, Circe is no longer disgusted by "poisonous," snake-like behavior—or at least, she does not reject it like she once did. Instead, she seems to take for granted that everyone slithers through the world with a low profile until the time comes to strike at others. She even thinks of herself in these terms, as an opportunistic creature who will readily lash out even at those closest to her if they hurt her. Becoming a snake is how she survives. She even begins to forgive her siblings for doing the same.
Thinking of herself as a snake eventually helps Circe justify her practice of turning sexually violent men into pigs and killing them. In Chapter 15 she writes:
There was always a leader. He was not the largest, and he need not be the captain, but he was the one they looked to for instruction in their cruelty. He had a cold eye and a coiling tension. Like a snake, the poets might say, but I knew snakes better by then. Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.
Circe hates herself for killing the men, but she tells herself that at least her violence is "honest." She strikes only when provoked. The men, on the other hand, perform sexual violence for fun. They are the true monsters.
Related Themes:
Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Supplication:
Covered in "Chapter 1 Explanation and Analysis—Supplication"
Supplication, or begging on bent knees before a powerful figure, is a motif in the novel. An early instance occurs in Chapter 1, when Circe imagines the execution of astronomers on days when Helios (i.e. the sun) stays out late on a whim:
I imagined [those astronomers], low as worms, sagging and bent. Please, they cried, on bony knees, it wasn’t our fault, the sun itself was late.
The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones. It is blasphemy to say so, you must die! And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two.
The astronomers are experts on the heavens. Circe knows that they are in fact correct that sometimes, Helios stays in the sky later than they could have predicted he would. However, when the astronomers' predictions turn out to be wrong, they must throw themselves on their knees and beg their kings not to kill them. Their pleas are almost never successful.
Circe is sickened by the idea that Helios can play with mortals' lives like this and that it can amuse him to do so. He is at the top of what she calls the "great chain of fear," wielding power over everyone below him. The kings are middle-men, holding their own power over the astronomers but still beholden to Helios and the rest of the gods. They believe that they are serving Helios by killing the "blasphemous" astronomers. It is their own form of supplication to Helios. And yet, all they are doing is reinforcing a hierarchy in which anyone who makes a mistake is doomed to throw themself on the ground before the next most powerful person. They might easily be next, and their only defense would be to beg.
In Chapter 11, Pasiphaë criticizes Circe for throwing herself on her knees before their father, time and time again:
“It is funny,” she said, “that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father’s halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.”
Pasiphaë points out that whenever Circe "shrank and simpered" before Helios, it only made it easier for him to keep her down. This moment is the start of Circe's realization that by falling to their knees before those who hold power over them, she and the astronomers alike are in fact presenting their necks to the axes waiting to fall on them. The "great chain of fear" operates best when it is being reinforced like this, both from the top and from the bottom. Pasiphaë has always seemed more powerful than Circe in part because she refuses to kneel before Helios. Still, she reinforces her power through cruelty. Circe's great dilemma in the book is how to protect herself without engaging in either undue cruelty or undue supplication.
Related Themes:
Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Mending:
Mending recurs throughout the novel as a metaphor for the interpersonal connection Circe craves. One example of this motif appears in Chapter 14, when a ship full of mortal men lands on the shore of Aiaia:
These were not heroes, or the crew of a king. They must scrabble for their livelihoods as Glaucos once did: hauling nets, carrying odd cargo, hunting down whatever dinner they could find. I felt a warmth run through me. My fingers itched as if for needle and thread. Here was something torn that I could mend.
Everything is hard work for these mortal sailors, and they are barely surviving. Metaphorically, they are "torn" cloth (possibly even torn sails) in need of a needle and thread to make them whole again. Circe is glad to see them because she imagines that she can use her power to sew them up and send them on their way. By contrast, the gods and nymphs who have previously passed through Aiaia during her exile have not needed much from Circe at all. The line "here was something torn that I could mend" suggests that she has been looking for a chance to feel capable and useful. She has been unable to reverse her spell on Scylla, and her father views her as such a liability that he has condemned her to exile. When she sees the sailors, she hopes that at last she will be able to fix something instead of breaking it.
As the novel goes on, it becomes apparent that Circe's urge to "mend" others and their problems is really a desire to repair her relationships with the people around her. In Chapter 24, she bitterly avoids Penelope and Telemachus while they "mend" their relationship:
The two of them were often together now, mending what had been broken. I did not care to see it.
Circe seems to envy the ability of the mother and son to come back from the brink of betrayal. Circe has never quite been able to repair things like this with anyone. Her relationships with Glaucos, Aeëtes, and nearly everyone else have all ended in abandonment. Even her years of love, care, and protection have not been enough to keep Telegonus from leaving her. The mortal men who once showed up on her shore and sought her aid ended up betraying her terribly. She responded to their sexual assault by killing them all. She carries deep shame about this incident, which she takes as confirmation that she is a harmful person fated to loneliness. She wants nothing more than to "mend" a relationship of her own, but it takes the entire novel for her to prove to herself that she can.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Snakes:
Covered in "Chapter 1 Explanation and Analysis—Snakes"
Snakes, both real and metaphorical, are a motif in the novel. Miller uses them to comment on power and monstrosity. In Chapter 1, Circe compares her siblings to snakes when they tease her about her father's cows:
I must have had an odd look on my face, for Perses and Pasiphaë began to snicker from their couch. “Did you swallow a frog?”
“No,” I said.
This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales. My sister said, “And how were our father’s golden heifers?”
“Beautiful.”
Perses laughed. “She doesn’t know! Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?”
“Never,” my sister said.
Perses and Pasiphaë delight in Circe's discomfort as they reveal to her that Helios's cows are so beautiful because he breeds with them himself. They are literally divine cows. Circe is disgusted both by this revelation and by her siblings' behavior, which borders on incest to match Helios's bestiality. She compares them to snakes to emphasize the way they both frighten and unsettle her. They always seem to be wrapped around each other, a two-headed monster waiting to strike.
When Prometheus is brought to Helios's palace for his punishment, he is accompanied by a Fury with snakes for hair. The snakes are part of the Fury's monstrous presentation, which everyone including Circe finds intimidating. However, importantly, this is one of Circe's first encounters with a woman powerful enough to imprison a man and command the attention of a full court. Unlike Pasiphaë, whose snakelike nature is intertwined with Perses's, the Fury shows Circe an example of a woman who can be snakelike all on her own.
By the time Circe meets Hermes in Chapter 8 and begins an affair with him, she has begun to see metaphorical snakes everywhere. She describes her relationship with Hermes as one between two snakes:
He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.
By this point, Circe is no longer disgusted by "poisonous," snake-like behavior—or at least, she does not reject it like she once did. Instead, she seems to take for granted that everyone slithers through the world with a low profile until the time comes to strike at others. She even thinks of herself in these terms, as an opportunistic creature who will readily lash out even at those closest to her if they hurt her. Becoming a snake is how she survives. She even begins to forgive her siblings for doing the same.
Thinking of herself as a snake eventually helps Circe justify her practice of turning sexually violent men into pigs and killing them. In Chapter 15 she writes:
There was always a leader. He was not the largest, and he need not be the captain, but he was the one they looked to for instruction in their cruelty. He had a cold eye and a coiling tension. Like a snake, the poets might say, but I knew snakes better by then. Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.
Circe hates herself for killing the men, but she tells herself that at least her violence is "honest." She strikes only when provoked. The men, on the other hand, perform sexual violence for fun. They are the true monsters.
Related Themes:
Chapter 21
Explanation and Analysis—Spider-Silk:
Circe repeatedly uses similes comparing Penelope to a spider. An early example of this motif occurs in Chapter 21, when Penelope comes to Circe's door to thank her for her hospitality:
The knock upon my door came, as I had guessed it would.
“Open,” I said.
She was framed in my doorway, wearing a pale cloak over a gray dress, as if she were wrapped in spider-silk.
Penelope has thus far acted graciously with Circe. She knocks on Circe's door now because the polite thing to do as a guest is to thank her host. By comparing Penelope's cloak to "spider-silk," Circe indicates to the reader that she still does not trust Penelope. It is a strange situation, after all. Circe and Telegonus are the second family of Penelope's husband. For two decades, Penelope raised Telemachus alone and refused men's advances because she was so faithful to her absent husband. She could have been forgiven for writing him off, but she didn't. Meanwhile, part of Odysseus's delay was due to his affair with Circe. Even Circe feels that Penelope has every right to hate her. She worries that Penelope is using her good manners to lure Circe into a false sense of security, like a spider spinning a web to catch an insect.
Such deceptiveness is far from unheard of in the world of The Odyssey and Circe. Elaborate codes of hospitality mean that hosts and guests often must negotiate power struggles in indirect ways, while maintaining an air of politeness toward one another. However, the spider simile is unique to Penelope. As a motif, it turns into an epithet that gestures at something deeper about her personality. Penelope is a gifted weaver. She staves off suitors in part by weaving a funeral shroud for Odysseus's father; every night she undoes her work so that she must start again, delaying the moment when she will be free from her work and available to pick a suitor. Her skill at weaving cloth is thus associated with her skill at weaving complex deceptions. She is able to manipulate the fibers of truth and reality to get what she wants and needs.
While it may at first seem like an indictment on Penelope to call her a manipulative spider, Circe comes to respect Penelope for both her real and metaphorical weaving skills. Both women are able to work a loom, but Penelope is clearly the more talented. Likewise, Circe realizes that Penelope may be a better witch than she ever was because she is spider-like. Pharmaka is the magic of transformation. The gods have long believed that it is a new, threatening kind of divine power. But as Circe tells Penelope, it is not powered by divinity at all. Instead, it is fueled by determination to bring about an envisioned reality. No one is more determined than the woman who spent 20 years weaving a future where her husband would return home. Penelope's spider-like ability to bend the world to her will turns out to be her most admirable quality.
Related Themes:
Chapter 24
Explanation and Analysis—Mending:
Covered in "Chapter 14 Explanation and Analysis—Mending"
Mending recurs throughout the novel as a metaphor for the interpersonal connection Circe craves. One example of this motif appears in Chapter 14, when a ship full of mortal men lands on the shore of Aiaia:
These were not heroes, or the crew of a king. They must scrabble for their livelihoods as Glaucos once did: hauling nets, carrying odd cargo, hunting down whatever dinner they could find. I felt a warmth run through me. My fingers itched as if for needle and thread. Here was something torn that I could mend.
Everything is hard work for these mortal sailors, and they are barely surviving. Metaphorically, they are "torn" cloth (possibly even torn sails) in need of a needle and thread to make them whole again. Circe is glad to see them because she imagines that she can use her power to sew them up and send them on their way. By contrast, the gods and nymphs who have previously passed through Aiaia during her exile have not needed much from Circe at all. The line "here was something torn that I could mend" suggests that she has been looking for a chance to feel capable and useful. She has been unable to reverse her spell on Scylla, and her father views her as such a liability that he has condemned her to exile. When she sees the sailors, she hopes that at last she will be able to fix something instead of breaking it.
As the novel goes on, it becomes apparent that Circe's urge to "mend" others and their problems is really a desire to repair her relationships with the people around her. In Chapter 24, she bitterly avoids Penelope and Telemachus while they "mend" their relationship:
The two of them were often together now, mending what had been broken. I did not care to see it.
Circe seems to envy the ability of the mother and son to come back from the brink of betrayal. Circe has never quite been able to repair things like this with anyone. Her relationships with Glaucos, Aeëtes, and nearly everyone else have all ended in abandonment. Even her years of love, care, and protection have not been enough to keep Telegonus from leaving her. The mortal men who once showed up on her shore and sought her aid ended up betraying her terribly. She responded to their sexual assault by killing them all. She carries deep shame about this incident, which she takes as confirmation that she is a harmful person fated to loneliness. She wants nothing more than to "mend" a relationship of her own, but it takes the entire novel for her to prove to herself that she can.
Related Themes:
