Circe

by

Madeline Miller

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Themes and Colors
Power, Fear, and Self-Preservation Theme Icon
Women, Power, and Misogyny Theme Icon
Change, Initiative, and the Self Theme Icon
Mortality, Fragility, and Fulfillment Theme Icon
Family and Individuality Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Circe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Change, Initiative, and the Self Theme Icon

Change is a central topic in Circe and plays a key role in the main character’s development. Transformation is Circe’s greatest skill—she is able to transform people and things into different kinds of beings—and she also longs to transform the world around her to be less cruel. But the most remarkable change in the story is Circe’s own, as she transforms herself from an impotent nymph into a powerful goddess-witch and then, at the end of the novel, into a mortal. But making these changes is not easy. Throughout the book, Circe’s attitudes toward the act of transformation evolve. She begins the story looking to others to bring about the change she wishes to see, whether this be from Glaucos, whom she hopes will give her a happy eternity by marrying her, or from her father, Helios, whom she desperately hopes will save her from the man who violently rapes her. Time and time again, no one intervenes to help her. With no other choice, Circe takes matters into her own hands, ending her exile, killing Scylla, and becoming a mortal. In this way, the story suggests that the most effective way to bring about change is to do it oneself rather than relying on others to act.

Circe, who begins the story as a very passive nymph, learns that she cannot rely on others to intervene when a situation needs changing. Although Circe’s childhood is a stream of “dull miseries,” she is passive and never takes steps to alleviate her wretchedness. Her hopes for escape rely on other people acting for her, such as her brother Aeëtes taking her to his kingdom, or a man marrying her. Neither of these two dreams come to pass, demonstrating that simply hoping other people will help is ineffective in making change. When Circe learns that monster-Scylla feeds on humans, she is horrified—having been the one who made Scylla a monster as a means of revenge, she knows that she has perpetuated the gods’ careless cruelty against mortals. But instead of brainstorming ways that she could stop Scylla herself, Circe’s first thought is whether another god will kill the monster. Yet no other god intervenes; they benefit from the deaths and therefore have no motivation to act. Their inaction teaches Circe that she cannot trust others to make the world a less cruel place. However, Circe’s passivity ends after she is raped by sailors who arrive on her island. When one of the sailors approaches her, Circe is sure that “[her] father would appear [...] outraged at the insult to his child.” When no one comes, it sinks in that she cannot trust anyone else to protect her.

Through the limited impact of Circe’s magic—particularly transformation—the novel demonstrates how one cannot expect to better the world by trying to change other people. Circe’s greatest talent is transformation, yet she finds that her power has significant limitations: “Transformation touche[s] only bodies, not minds.” In other words, Circe is unable to genuinely influence others’ thoughts or actions, even if she can change their physical form. For instance, Circe transforms Glaucos into a god, assuming that he will marry her once they’re both immortal. But Glaucos—drunk with his new power—becomes vain and egotistical and decides to marry the most beautiful nymph, Scylla, instead of Circe. And even after Circe transforms Scylla into a monster, Glaucos still won’t marry Circe. She has changed him into a god, but she’s powerless to change his thoughts or behavior, which makes her suffer. In general, Circe’s magic allows her to meddle in various situations, but it does not allow her to solve the underlying issues that cause her or others pain. She can momentarily curb the Minotaur’s appetite, for instance, but she can’t change that her sister Pasiphaë and Pasiphaë’s husband, Minos, use the man-eating monster as means to maintain power. And Circe changes boatloads of men into pigs to demonstrate that she, a woman, is not weak, but that does not change the systemic violence against women that pervades the novel.

The only time that Circe is able to create significant change is when she does it herself. After her son Telegonus leaves, Circe is struck with the realization that all her actions up to that moment have not changed her situation: she is still alone and exiled for eternity. While despairing at the world she lives in, she recalls Trygon telling her to “make another” world. At last, she understands that if she wants to improve her own situation or the world at large, she has to do it herself. Her first step is summoning Helios and strong-arming him into ending her exile, demonstrating that she must make the change that she wants to happen. Having liberated herself from exile, Circe then plans to kill Scylla, since she wants to end Scylla’s incessant murdering of mortals—violence for which she feels personally responsible, since she was the one who made Scylla a man-eating monster in the first place. Although Circe knows that she cannot stop every abuse of power in the world, she can at least stop her own part in it by turning Scylla into stone. Upon killing Scylla, Circe decides to leave the destructive world of the gods by transforming herself into a mortal, thereby formally ending her participation in the cycle of abuse that the gods perpetuate.

By the end of the novel, Circe knows that she cannot rely on other people to better her situation or to change society’s cycles of violence and cruelty. But she has power to both improve her own life and improve the world in small ways by helping others and refusing to be violent. At the end of the novel, Circe dreams of her life as a mortal. She imagines traveling with Telemachus, him patching ships and her curing sicknesses, the two of them “tak[ing] pleasure in the simple mending of the world.” There is no seismic shift in the way of the world, but Circe and Telemachus take action to improve it in the ways they can.

Related Themes from Other Texts
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Change, Initiative, and the Self ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Change, Initiative, and the Self appears in each chapter of Circe. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Change, Initiative, and the Self Quotes in Circe

Below you will find the important quotes in Circe related to the theme of Change, Initiative, and the Self.
Chapter 2 Quotes

I found that I was not afraid of the pain that would come. It was another terror that gripped me: that the blade would not cut at all. That it would pass through me, like falling into smoke.

It did not pass through. My skin leapt apart at the blade’s touch, and the pain darted silver and hot as lightning strike. The blood that flowed was red, for I did not have my uncle’s power. The wound seeped for a long time before it began to reknit itself. I sat watching it, and as I watched I found a new thought in myself. I am embarrassed to tell it, so rudimentary it seems, like an infant’s discovery that her hand is her own. But that is what I was then, an infant.

The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Prometheus
Page Number: 23-24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“You fools,” I said. “I am the one who made that creature. I did it for pride and vain delusion. And you thank me? Twelve of your men are dead for it, and how many thousands more to come? That drug I gave her is the strongest I have. Do you understand, mortals?” […]

The light from my eyes beat down upon them.

“I will never be free of her. She cannot be changed back, not now, not ever. What she is, she will remain. She will feast on your kind for all eternity. So get up. Get up and get to your oars, and let me not hear you speak again of your imbecile gratitude or I will make you sorry for it.”

The cringed and shook like the weak vessels they were, stuttering to their feet and creeping away […] I yanked off the cloak. I wanted the sun to burn me.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Pasiphaë, Daedalus, Hermes, Scylla
Page Number: 117
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

From time to time the wood buckled and a pig escaped. Most often, he would throw himself from the cliffs […] If it were a man, I wondered if I would pity him. But it was not a man.

When I passed back by the pen, his friends would stare at me with pleading faces. They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker)
Page Number: 195
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

“Why can you not be more peaceful?” I whispered. “Why must it be so hard?”

As if in answer, a vision of my father’s halls drifted up: the sterile earth floor, the black gleam of obsidian […] I had laid quiet and still, but I remembered the ravening hunger that was in me always: to climb into my father’s lap, to rise and run and shout, snatch the draughts from the board and batter them against the walls […] shake [Helios] for every secret, as fruits are shaken from a tree. But if I had done even one of those things there would have been no mercy. He would have burnt me down to ash […]

Why should [Telegonus] be peaceful? I never was, nor his father either, when I knew him. The difference was that he was not afraid to be burnt.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Telegonus
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

You were ready to fight me to have it. Not if I am willing?

My stomach churned against itself. “Please. Do not make me do this.”

Make you? Child, you have come to me […]

I lifted the blade, touched its tip to the creature’s skin. It tore as flowers tear, ragged and easy. The golden ichor welled up, drifting over my hands. I remember what I thought: surely, I am condemned for this. I can craft all the spells I want, all the magic spears. Yet I will spend the rest of my days watching this creature bleed […]

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.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Trygon (speaker)
Related Symbols: Gold
Page Number: 282-283
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“When I was young, I overheard our palace surgeon talking. He said that the medicines he sold were only for show. Most hurts heal by themselves, he said, if you give them enough time […] I took it for a philosophy. I have always been good at waiting, you see. I outlasted the war and the suitors. I outlasted Odysseus’s travels. I told myself that if I were patient enough, I could outlast his restlessness and Athena too […] And while I sat, Telemachus bore his father’s rage year after year. He suffered while I turned my eyes away […] But this world does have true medicines. You are proof of that. You walked the depths for your son. You defied the gods. I think of all the years of my life I wasted on that little man’s boast. I have paid for it, that is only justice, but I have made Telemachus pay as well.”

Related Characters: Penelope (speaker), Circe, Telegonus, Telemachus, Odysseus, Athena
Page Number: 329-330
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

My island lay around me. My herbs, my house, my animals. And so it would go, I thought, on and on, forever the same. It did not matter if Penelope and Telemachus were kind. It did not matter even if they stayed for their whole lives, if she were the friend I had yearned for and he were something else, it would only be a blink. They would wither, and I would burn their bodies and watch my memories of them fade as everything faded in the endless wash of the centuries […] For me there was nothing. I would go on through the countless millennia, while everyone I met ran through my fingers and I was left with only those who were like me. The Olympians and Titans. My sister and brothers. My father.

I felt something in me then […] I seemed to hear that pale creature in his black depths.

Then, child, make another.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Aeëtes, Telemachus, Pasiphaë, Penelope, Perses, Trygon
Page Number: 357-358
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

With every step I felt lighter […] I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

Telemachus slept on […] So often on Aiaia, I had wondered how it would feel to touch him.

His eyes opened as if I had spoken the words aloud. They were clear as they always were.

I said, "Scylla was not born a monster. I made her."

His face was in the fire's shadows. "How did it happen?"

There was a piece of me that shouted its alarm: if you speak he will turn gray and hate you. But I pushed past it. If he turned gray, then he did. I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unraveling them again at night, making nothing. I told him the whole tale of it, each jealousy and folly and all the lives that had been lost because of me.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Telemachus (speaker), Scylla
Page Number: 373
Explanation and Analysis: