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Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Circe's Secret Powers:
In Chapter 5, after Circe has transformed Glaucos into a god, he asks her to bring him to her family. Circe brings him first to her grandmother, Tethys, in a scene filled with dramatic irony:
I brought him to my grandmother. My hands trembled a little, but the lies were ready on my lips. He had fallen asleep in a meadow and woken like this. “Perhaps my wish to turn him immortal was a kind of prophecy. It is not unknown in my father’s children.”
She scarcely listened. She suspected nothing. No one had ever suspected me.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Water Around a Rock:
In Chapter 6, after Helios announces Circe's exile, no one speaks in her defense or even looks at her. She uses a simile and situational irony to comment on how it feels to be ignored in this moment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+For the last time, I watched all the gods and nymphs take their places. I felt dazed. I should say goodbye, I kept thinking. But my cousins flowed away from me like water around a rock. I heard their sneering whispers as they passed. I found myself missing Scylla. At least she would have dared to speak to my face.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Open Cage:
In Chapter 7, Circe arrives on Aiaia for her eternal exile. After a fearful first night, a simile helps her arrive at an epiphany about the irony of her situation:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The worst of my cowardice had been sweated out. In its place was a giddy spark. I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.
I stepped into those woods and my life began.
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Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Veiled Goddess:
In Chapter 13, Jason and Medea come to Aiaia hoping for katharsis, a cleansing ritual, after they steal away from Aeëtes and kill his favorite son (Medea's brother). Before they reveal all this or even tell Circe their names, Circe describes them with heightened dramatic irony and foreshadowing:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The pair moved towards me gracefully and without hesitation, as if they were expected guests. They knelt at my feet and the woman held her hands up, long-fingered and bare of any adornment. Her veil was arranged so that not one strand of hair showed beneath it. Her chin stayed resolutely down, concealing her face.
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Restless Sleeper:
At the start of Chapter 17, Circe comments on the situational irony of Odysseus's restless sleeping patterns. Little does she know that this irony foreshadows what is to come in this chapter:
Unlock with LitCharts A+For most men [sleep is] a reminder of the stillness that waits at the end of days. But Odysseus’ slumber was like his life, tossed and restless, heavy with murmurs that made my wolves prick up their ears. I watched him in the pearl-gray light of dawn: the tremors of his face, the striving tension in his shoulders. He twisted the sheets as if they were opponents he tried to throw in a wrestling match. A year of peaceful days he had stayed with me, and still every night he went to war.
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Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Cutting Trygon's Tail:
In Chapter 20, after Circe proves that she would be willing to endure eternal pain in exchange for Trygon's tail, he offers it to her freely. The moment when she cuts it, far more easily than she would have expected, is rife with imagery and situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The tail came free in my hand. It was nearly weightless, and up close there was a quality to it almost like iridescence. “Thank you,” I said, but my voice was air.
I felt the currents move. The grains of sand whispered against each other. His wings were lifting. The darkness around us shimmered with clouds of his gilded blood. Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer.
Then, child, make another.
He glided off into the dark, trailing a ribbon of gold behind him.
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