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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Circe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power, Fear, and Self-Preservation
Women, Power, and Misogyny
Change, Initiative, and the Self
Mortality, Fragility, and Fulfillment
Family and Individuality
Summary
Analysis
A rumor is circulating in Helios’s halls that a Titan named Prometheus is going to be punished. Prometheus had long ago disobeyed Zeus by giving humans fire, a tool that brought humans out of a primitive existence and guided them to civilization. Zeus was furious; he wanted to keep cultural pleasures and technological comforts for the gods alone. In response, Zeus imprisoned Prometheus until he could devise a proper punishment. Now, Zeus has at last decided what that torment will be.
Zeus’s determination to keep fire from humans has to do with his desire for gods to maintain power over the mortals. Without fire, mortals were stuck in a miserable and primitive state. Because only the gods were able to enjoy the world’s pleasures and comforts, they easily kept the mortals fearful of the gods’ power and indebted to the gods for any of life’s pleasures. But now that the humans have fire, they gained some independence from the gods, as it has enabled them to progress and form civilizations.
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Circe’s Titan relatives are frantic; to them, Zeus’s punishing Prometheus reads as an example of Olympian power over the Titans. After all, the Olympians are now the ruling divinities, a situation that the Titans, who pre-existed them, resent. Not only are the Titans older, but the Olympians are actually descended from the Titans; Kronos, the king of the Titans, was the father of the original Olympian gods. Long ago, Kronos heard a prophesy that one of his children would overthrow him. In an effort to prevent the prediction from coming true, Kronos ate each of his children as they were born. When Zeus was born, however, his mother, Rhea, concealed him and kept him hidden until adulthood.
Zeus’s punishment is not just revenge—it also serves as an example to the other Titans that the Olympians are the ones in power. Zeus wants to instill fear in the other Titans so that they don’t rebel. The use of abuse to maintain power has a long-standing history among the gods, and this history demonstrates one way that families pass down their vices. In punishing Prometheus in order to flex his power over the other Titans, Zeus follows the footsteps of his own cruel father, Kronos. Titan Kronos ate his children in an attempt to maintain power, which again illustrates how the gods’ love for power supersedes any love that they have for their families. Zeus narrowly escaped being eaten by his father, but he appears to have absorbed Kronos’s violent ways.
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Once grown, Zeus poisoned Kronos and freed his siblings from Kronos’s stomach. Gathering them together, Zeus then led his siblings into battle against the Titans. Although most of the Titans joined Kronos in the fight against the Olympians (as Zeus and his siblings named themselves), Helios and a few other Titans joined Zeus. While some people believe that Helios sided with Zeus because he hated Kronos’s pride, others say it was because Helios, who has prophetic powers, knew that Zeus would win. The war was gruesome and bathed the earth in divine blood. Eventually, the Olympians won, and Zeus stripped the defying Titans of their powers.
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Centuries have passed since the war, but gods’ grudges never die. The Titans are still bitter about their subjugation at the hands of the Olympians. Circe frequently overhears her Titan relatives’ defiant whispers, and though Helios quiets them with concessions that Zeus “does well enough,” he insinuates that the Olympians’ reign won’t last forever. Helios’s words satisfy the resentful Titans, and they hope for a future battle.
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Now that Prometheus is going to face punishment, the other Titans again seek Helios’s council, as they suspect that the Olympians are flexing their power over the Titans by making an example of rebellious Prometheus. But Helios dismisses their fears and refuses to defend Prometheus. To Helios, Prometheus deserves to be punished for “his foolish love for mortals.” The other Titans nod and passively accept Helios’s judgement.
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Leading up to the punishment, the other divinities eagerly debate what horrors wait in store for Prometheus. Gods rarely ever experience pain, and this novelty is what makes them so excited to see it in action. Of course, the thought of being in pain themselves is terrifying.
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On the day of the torture, the Titan gods and their offspring crowd into Helios’s halls to watch. A Fury (a goddess of vengeance) appears in the doorway, dragging Prometheus and a whip behind her. She chains him high on the wall so that he dangles, his body stretched tight. Circe anxiously waits for one of the other Titans to intercede for him—“they were his family, after all”—but no one does. The Fury begins to whip Prometheus viciously as the spectators look on, occasionally jostling for a better view.
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Literary Devices
Eventually the watching deities become bored and meander back to their feasting and lounging. The Fury also leaves. At last, only Circe remains in the hall with Prometheus, whose golden blood streams down his back. Circe remembers having heard that Prometheus could have begged for a lighter punishment, but that he turned down the chance.
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As Circe listens to Prometheus’s ragged breathing, it sinks in that she is the only one left. With her pulse quickening, she offers to bring Prometheus nectar, which he accepts with thanks. As she hurries to the feasting hall, she knows that she is taking a risk; even though no one has banned her from talking with Prometheus, she would nonetheless likely be punished. But no one notices her, so she brings back nectar for the Titan, who thanks her. She is surprised at his gentle manner and realizes that “Bold action and bold manner are not the same.”
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Circe asks Prometheus what mortals are like. He replies that they are all different, sharing only the fate that they all die and go to the underworld. There, they become as insubstantial as shadows. Circe is deeply disturbed by this description. She then asks Prometheus why he refused Zeus’s offer to let him beg for forgiveness. Instead of answering, he turns the question on her and asks what she thinks would drive him to do so. She has no response, and he tells her that “Not every god need be the same.” Suddenly they hear a noise in the hallway, and he urges her to leave.
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Circe leaves Prometheus and goes to the feasting hall, where no one acknowledges her. A sense of awareness dawns on her. She walks into her Helios’s treasury and takes one of his daggers, which she brings back to her room. She lays it on her unmarked palm. With the blade in hand, she finds that she doesn’t fear pain so much as not being able to be cut at all. She slices at her hand, and the knife does cut her, revealing her red blood. As she looks at her oozing hand, she suddenly realizes that, while her life feels like “murk and depths.” She is “not a part of that dark water. [She is] a creature within it.”
