Themes
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
Circe wakes Telemachus to tell him that she will help him leave for his journey, so long as he agrees to several restrictions. Overjoyed, he agrees to follow whatever rules she decides. To start, she has him help her make a potion with which they will protect his ship. After telling him to stay on the ship until he can speak directly with Odysseus, she then goes over his route with him and advises him how to behave with Penelope and Telemachus, warning him to be on his guard. He confidently tells her not to worry.
Circe’s decision to not just let Telemachus go, but also to help him on his way, shows that she is not giving into selfishness, which she has struggled with previously. She puts his desires above hers, demonstrating her capacity for empathy, an emotion unfamiliar to her family. Compassion isn’t easy for her to exercise, but she has learned it through acknowledging her faults and wanting to be kinder than selfish family. Additionally, Circe’s realization that she cannot convince Telemachus to remain on Aiaia to keep him safe is representative of how trying to change people’s minds is often ineffective. Knowing this, she takes action to keep him safe by doing what she can (magic) while letting him pursue his goals.
Themes
The last thing to complete before Telegonus leaves is a task that Circe saves for herself. Stepping into the ocean, she uses her naiad power to slide into Oceanos, the river that runs around the world and travels beneath the deepest part of the ocean. She and Aeëtes had gone to this deep part of the ocean together to see Trygon, an ancient and powerful sea creature with a poisonous tail. Its stinger could kill a mortal instantly and doom a god to eternal pain. Circe recalls how Aeëtes’s eyes flashed at the sight of the tail, marveling at what a weapon it could be.
Aeëtes is always looking for ways to accumulate more power—so, when he saw the creature Trygon, he instantly considered how it could serve his purposes. Aeëtes’s greediness for the tail demonstrates how, in a society that is obsessed with power, people don’t hesitate to use the beings around them as tools to gain more power.
Themes
Circe knows that she is breaking her exile by going to Trygon. She hopes that the night will prevent any gods from seeing, but it is still a risk. She travels through the water until she reaches the deepest part of the ocean. When she arrives, she calls out to Trygon, challenging him.
Visiting Trygon is the first time that Circe has dared to break her exile—by doing so, she is disobeying the gods. Instead of seeking help from someone else, she takes matters into her own hands to directly achieve what she wants, which is a way to protect her son. Her initiative in breaking her exile suggests that she knows that the most effective way to achieve change is to do it herself.
Themes
When Circe sees Trygon swimming toward her, she shrinks away. He is huge, a great winged creature. His voice speaking in her mind, he asks why she has come. She tells him that she seeks to claim his stinger, with which she hopes to protect her son from Athena. He tells her that it is impossible—many people have come to take his tail, including Aeëtes, but none of them could. She presses on, insisting there must be some way. At last, he tells her that the stinger is hers if she first experiences its poison and that, when she no longer has need for it, that she must throw it back into the ocean so that he may claim it again.
Trygon will only give his tail to someone who is willing to sacrifice themselves for it. The implication is that anyone who agrees to suffer for the tail likely has a selfless goal in mind, given that people who care only for themselves would not agree to doom themselves to eternal torment. Trygon’s terms have turned away everyone else who has come to visit him, which suggests that those who have come to get his tail have all been selfish.
Themes
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Circe inwardly shrivels at the thought of eternal pain, but she forces herself to think of Telegonus. She tells Trygon that she agrees to his conditions. She walks across the ocean floor to him, her legs trembling. Envisioning her son’s face, she reaches for the stinger, but Trygon has whipped it away from her. He tells her that the fact that she would have touched the poison is enough. Circe is confused and suddenly reluctant, but Trygon presses her to follow through on her demand, telling her how to cut the stinger off. She does so, and the sight of Trygon’s golden blood feels like a curse. She watches the blood trail behind him as he swims away.
Circe loves her son so much that she is willing to be tortured for eternity, which shows that she is willing to sacrifice herself in order to protect someone else. Trygon recognizes Circe’s selflessness and decides to give Circe his tail without her needing to experience the poison. The implication is that, because Circe understands the meaning of sacrifice, she will not take his sacrifice lightly in turn. Circe does indeed appreciate the weight of Trygon’s sacrifice, even becoming reluctant to cut the stinger off. She would have fought Trygon for his tail because she is used to defending herself against people who want to harm her. By offering her his tail, Trygon makes Circe understand the selfishness of causing someone else pain in order to achieve one’s own goals. When she cuts off his tail, he bleeds gold, symbolizing how he is losing his power for her, which is a great sacrifice in a world where power is the most prized thing a person can have. Circe feels cursed as she watches him bleed because she knows that she is weakening this creature for her own benefit—she is participating in the cycle of power and abuse, committing a bloody act for her own gain (even if her goal is to help someone else).
Themes
When Circe returns to Aiaia, she swaps the blade on Telegonus’s spear with the poisonous stinger, over which she places a moly-infused sheath. When she tells her son that his spear now holds the tail of Trygon, he is awestruck and stoops to bow. But she makes him rise, telling him that such formalities don’t suit either of them. After breakfast, she sends him on his way, watching his ship until it disappears from view.
Circe has shown many times throughout the story that she dislikes when people bow to her, as the gesture reminds her of the distance between herself and the mortals that she loves and cares about. This distance consists of the imbalance of power, which inspires fear in mortals and prevents them from treating her as an equal—and equality and respect are fundamental in creating the genuine connections that Circe yearns for. Circe is unlike many of the other gods, as she prefers to be loved rather than feared.
Themes
