Freedom and Confinement Theme Analysis

As the title of Aeschylus’s play suggests, the Titan Prometheus is bound to the side of a mountain by Zeus’s servants, Kratos and Bia. Shackled by chains and fear, Prometheus is made to endure endless suffering. He is exposed to the elements as he waits for Zeus’s thunderbolt to strike him down, at which time a ravenous eagle will peck at his “blackened liver.” Each night, Prometheus’s liver will regenerate only to be shredded again the next day, and this will continue until Zeus decides to spare him or until Prometheus’s savior is born in “ten generations, and another three.” Even in the face of this immense suffering, however, it is Prometheus’s confinement that is most torturous. For Prometheus, there is no chance of escape, and since he is immortal, he cannot even hope to die. “There are no carefree gods, except for Zeus,” Kratos says. “He rules us all, so he alone is free.” But while many of Aeschylus’s characters are indeed confined, both physically and by other means, Kratos’s comment is not entirely true. Despite his confinement, Prometheus’s will cannot be broken, and it is through his example that Aeschylus argues that psychological confinement is just as powerful as physical confinement.

Prometheus is not the only character in Prometheus Bound who is physically confined. Several other characters endure this fate as well, each punished by the powerful wrath of Zeus. When Typhon, a massive serpentine monster, challenged Zeus for control of the cosmos, Zeus struck him down with thunder and lighting. Now, Typhon is but “a sprawling, helpless form” “pressed down, close by the narrows of the sea,” far “beneath the roots of Aetna.” In other words, he is buried deep beneath Mount Etna, a volcano off the coast of Sicily, with no hope of escape. After Io, a mortal princess and Zeus’s lover, is transformed into a cow by Zeus to hide her from his jealous wife, Io is held captive by the “hideous mock of [her] appearance.” Her mind as well as her shape is “distorted,” and she is “ashamed” of what she has become. She sets out alone, imprisoned by her unsightly form, to “wander” the “very limits of the world.” While Typhon’s confinement is more literal and Io’s is more psychological, they are both imprisoned by Zeus, just as Kronos and the other Titans were banished to Tartaros, the dungeon of the underworld, and Atlas is forced to hold up heaven and earth for all of eternity. Like Prometheus, nearly every character is confined in some way, robbed of their freedom by an all-powerful Zeus.

Even those who are not physically confined by Zeus are still not wholly free, which implies that freedom is more than just the absence of imprisonment. When Hephaistos is forced by Kratos to bind Prometheus to the mountain, he does not want to do it. “Not of my own will but compelled,” Hephaistos says to Prometheus, “by the same power that holds you captive.” That is, Hephaistos is not held physically captive by Zeus, but he is still bound by him. After Hephaistos leaves, Okeanos (the Titan god of oceans and streams) comes to Prometheus, his old friend, to save him. “Don’t try to hold me back,” Okeanos says to Prometheus, “my will is set.” But Okeanos eventually comes to recognize that his will is not his own, and he is forced to leave Prometheus bound to the mountain or risk Zeus’s wrath himself. Even those who punish Prometheus, Kratos and Bia, are not free. They are but the servants of Zeus. Bia, or Force, is Zeus’s unyielding violence; and Kratos, or Might, is Zeus’s will. Both exist only to do Zeus’s bidding, and they are not free to act on their own volition, even if they were so inclined. Their sole purpose is to deliver punishment as handed down by Zeus.

Hermes, Zeus’s son and messenger, is likewise under Zeus’s control. According to Prometheus, Hermes is “the mouthpiece of the gods” and Zeus’s “lackey.” He is but “the carrier pigeon of our new commander in chief,” Prometheus says, and when Hermes arrives to get information of Zeus’s fate from Prometheus’s famous “forethought,” Prometheus refuses to talk. “I would not exchange my own misfortune for your slavery,” Prometheus says to Hermes. Regardless of the torment Zeus can rain down on Prometheus, he “won’t bend,” and being bound to the mountain is not enough to break his will. Despite his physical confinement, Prometheus is mentally free—he won’t be beholden to Zeus and his power.