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
Helios appears. Circe asks for her exile to end and, when he refuses, she requests that he argue on her behalf to Zeus. To strengthen her case, she threatens him with going to Zeus herself and telling him that she spoke to Prometheus when he was being punished. This would reflect poorly on Helios, who will be held responsible for his daughter’s actions. She adds that she will also expose the Titans’ treasonous whispers that she heard when living in the halls of the gods.
Circe overcomes her paralyzing feelings of indifference and calls on Helios to demand that he release her from her exile, a bold move that speaks to Circe’s initiative: she knows that no one will willingly free her from her exile so, if she wants freedom, she has to get it herself. To secure this freedom, she threatens Helios, using fear in order to make him comply. She even leverages ancient Greece’s misogynistic attitudes, telling Helios that she will tarnish his reputation by telling Zeus of her rebellious behavior in helping Prometheus, which would make it seem like Helios isn’t powerful enough to control his daughter. Ancient Greek society deemed women as weaker than men, so Circe’s rebelling would make it seem like Helios wasn’t strong enough to keep her in check.
Themes
Furious that she dare defy him, Helios declares that he could end her with his power. But Circe does not stop. Instead, she warns him that, while he knows of some of her exceptional deeds (like defending herself against Athena and getting Trygon’s tail), he has no idea of the extent of her powers. She dares him to “find out.” After a pause, Helios agrees to end her exile, but he tells her he will never help her again. She agrees, and before he departs, she tells him to no longer claim her as his child.
Circe tells Helios of her accomplishments to make him too afraid to challenge her, demonstrating how fear can be used to maintain power. Circe, who has already been distancing herself from her family by exercising compassion and avoiding violence, tells her father to no longer consider her his child. In doing so, she is symbolically cutting ties with her family.
Themes
Thinking of Trygon’s tail, Circe suddenly knows what she next wishes to do. She finds Penelope in the hall and tells her that, while she is leaving Aiaia, Penelope is welcome to stay. Slowly, Penelope tells her that she does indeed want to remain on the island. Circe then leads Penelope to her herbs, pointing out which ones cast illusions and which ones are sleeping potions, should she encounter ruthless visitors. Smiling, Penelope reminds Circe that she has “some experience in handling unwelcome guests.”
Both Penelope and Circe have experienced harassment at the hands of men, which speaks to the misogyny of ancient Greece. Women generally aren’t treated with respect and dignity, which Penelope and Circe know from first-hand attacks. Therefore, when Circe points out the potion to use for protection in case violent men visit Aiaia’s shores, Penelope expresses cynical understanding—she has also developed tactics for keeping men at bay, which highlights how men’s attacks on women lead to women isolating themselves out of self-preservation.
Themes
Circe heads down to Telegonus’s old boat and is shocked to see the improvements that Telemachus has made, particularly the boat’s beautiful lion-shaped figurehead. As she stands admiring it, Telemachus surprises her from the shadows. He tells her that he heard her conversation with Helios, and so he knows that she is leaving. Her eyes averted, Circe tells him that he is welcome to stay or go. After a pause, Telemachus tells her that he has been angry at her for having thought he would leave with Athena. He sharply reminds her that he is different from both Odysseus and Telegonus.
The boat is a testament to Telemachus’s excellent craftmanship, a skill that has attracted Circe to him since the beginnings of their acquaintanceship. Telemachus has been upset that Circe assumed that he would follow Athena’s orders. Given his distaste for his father—which Circe knows about—Telemachus is hurt that Circe expected that he would follow in Odysseus’s footsteps.
Themes
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Her hand on the lion-shaped figurehead, Circe asks if he always makes gifts for those who anger him, to which Telemachus responds “No […] Only you.” She then confesses her own anger as well—she had thought he had been impatient to leave Aiaia. After he implies that he wishes to be wherever she goes, she tells him that they leave tomorrow morning.
Telemachus shows his love for Circe by creating a beautiful work of art, specifically a lion-shaped figurehead. The gift is a monument to Circe’s appreciation of labor and craftsmanship—two acts that she associates with mortals and with fulfillment. Moreover, the figurehead is in the shape of a lion, which calls to mind Circe’s pet lion, an animal that represented her power and independence. The lion died after Circe realized the illusion of her freedom and the limitations of her power. Now that she is truly free—having secured for herself an end to her exile—and has a better understanding of her power, the lion has returned in a different form.
Themes
The next day, they leave Aiaia and head to Scylla’s straits. On the way there, they catch 12 fish, which Circe transforms into rams. On the largest one, she ties a pot containing a potion. Telemachus’s hand is on the rudder, and Circe grasps her poison spear. As they approach Scylla, Circe turns Telemachus invisible.
Scylla represents Circe’s participation in her family’s careless violence and in the world’s brutal cycle of power and abuse. Her guilt over making this monster are what motivate her to undo her mistake. She never lets her regret lessen; it only gets stronger, to the point that her first move upon getting freedom is to rid the world of Scylla.
Themes
Scylla strikes the boat as soon as they come into range. She grabs six of the rams in her first dive, and then the other six in her next attack. Circe waits to hear the sound of the clay pot smashing in Scylla’s teeth, but she hears nothing. In the pot is a potion that Circe made last night by using the poison from Trygon’s tail. When Scylla swivels her heads again to the boat, Circe cries out to her, announcing that it is she, Circe, and that she has come to end the terror that she created.
This passage again illustrates how killing Scylla symbolizes Circe’s ending her complicity in the gods’ thoughtless abuse of mortals. No one else took on the task of killing Scylla, which speaks to how it is usually ineffective to wait for change to happen. Scylla will only be killed if Circe does it herself—and although killing Scylla won’t put an end to all of the gods’ violence, Circe at least ends her role in it.
Themes
Scylla is not listening, but has instead noticed Telemachus, despite Circe’s enchantment. As she weaves over them, Circe begins to panic, suddenly unsure whether the potion will work. Terrified for Telemachus’s life, Circe steps between him and the monster and brandishes the poison spear. But all of a sudden, Scylla begins to choke. Her body begins to slide from its cave and her heads begin to snap at each other. Circe sets aside the spear and joins Telemachus in rowing fiercely away from the falling monster. Her body hits the water, and its wave washes over the deck, taking with it Trygon’s spear and their food. As they exit the straits, Circe looks back at Scylla, who is now stone.
When Trygon gave Circe his tail, he instructed her to return it when she no longer needed it. The washing overboard of Trygon’s tail thus suggests that its purpose in Circe’s life is complete now that she used his sacrifice to make the world a less violent place, demonstrating that she took his words (to make a world that she is more satisfied with) to heart.
Themes
Circe and Telemachus row until they reach land. There, the two of them rest. Circe feels relief, freed from the burden of causing countless deaths. Facing the sea, she imagines Trygon’s tail floating downward to its owner. She walks back to where Telemachus sleeps and observes his calloused fingers. When his eyes open, Circe tells him the truth about Scylla.
Circe is relieved because she has ended her role in contributing to the world’s violence. By killing Scylla, she also shows how she has grown away from her family, whose wickedness she despises. Now that she feels at peace with her place in the world, she tells Telemachus her past. She is ready to love him and be loved in return, which can only happen if she knows that he loves and respects for who she is, flaws and all.
Themes
When Telemachus tries to comfort Circe, she sharply asks that he not try to mitigate her guilt when what she did was wrong, just as she would not dare to do so with him and the girls he killed at Odysseus’s request. When he tells her that she is wise, Circe contradicts him, saying that she had been a fool many times, her past littered with mistakes that no one should have to hear. Telemachus quietly meets her gaze and tells her that he wants to hear them. Pushing aside the many fears that had kept her back before—Athena, Odysseus, his mortality—Circe reaches for him.
Both Circe and Telemachus know the value of their guilt: it motivated them to confront their flaws and act against the world’s cruelty. Without self-reflection on their past crimes, neither of them would have changed or known why it was important to be confront the vices that they inherited from their families. Circe is at first hesitant to tell Telemachus about her past, likely because she worries that he will be disgusted by her—particularly since ancient Greek society expects women to be weak and uncomplicated. But Telemachus wants to know her past, demonstrating how he respects her as an equal. After all, he has terrible crimes in his past too, and he doesn’t expect her to be different. Overcoming her fears, including her anxieties around his mortality, Circe lets herself fall in love with Telemachus and be fully honest with him, showing how respect and equality allow women to find fulfillment.
Themes
