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.
Family and Individuality Theme Icon

Much of Circe’s story involves her trying to distance herself from her family, the cruel immortals of ancient Greek mythology. She is not alone in these endeavors; characters from Pasiphaë to Medea to Telemachus also seek to escape the violence in their families. In fact, all the families in Circe have significant faults, with Circe’s family being perhaps the most ruthless. Circe grows up in her father, Helios’s, halls, where she witnesses and experiences his callous brutality and narcissism. This environment leaves a lasting effect on Circe and her siblings, with many of them becoming just as cruel as the family they grew up in. As Circe becomes more involved in the goings on of the world, she learns of her siblings’ gruesome acts, from her sister Pasiphaë’s spite-fueled killing of serving girls to her brother Aeëtes’s grotesque torturing of sailors. She even faces the chilling fact that she, too, contains her family’s wickedness. After all, Circe does user her powers as a nymph to create Scylla, one of her world’s most infamous monsters. But, unlike her siblings, Circe finally refuses to perpetuate her family’s cycle of cruelty. By confronting her flaws and working to undo them, she becomes a deeply empathetic character. By depicting families and the few outliers who defy them, the novel illustrates how, although family is a formative influence on a person, it is possible to free oneself of one’s family and their faults.

Through depicting the family of the gods’ generational vices, the book illustrates how families shape a person. The gods are characterized by their egotism and cruelty. Except for Prometheus, all the gods that Circe meets in Helios’s halls act in the same petty and selfish way, often from birth. Circe sees this happen with her siblings, Pasiphaë and Perses, who immediately mirror their mother, Perse’s, malice. As she puts it, “The two of them were clever and quickly saw how things stood.” They assimilate to the family that they are in by emulating their parents’ cruelty, mocking and ostracizing Circe. Even when removed from their families, the gods are still marked by the wickedness that they grow up with. Aeëtes especially exemplifies this: when he leaves the halls of the gods, he becomes a sorcerer who tortures men for pleasure and display of power. This reflects Helios’s amusement when speaking of the mortal astronomers who are killed whenever he, appearing to mortals as the sun, does not follow their predictions. Aeëtes even seeks to murder his disobedient daughter, Medea, an act reminiscent of Helios’s melting the defiant Circe in a fit of rage.

Even those who hate their families nevertheless adopt their faults, as the vices that they have learned from their families are the same tools they know to use in order to survive. When Pasiphaë tells Circe that she loathes their brutal family and their obsession with power, Circe is shocked, as Pasiphaë “ha[s] always seemed […] their distillation, a glittering monument to [their] blood’s vain cruelty.” Despite her hatred for them, Pasiphaë believes that the only way to survive in their family is to play their games of power. As she tells Circe, “The only thing that makes them listen is power,” so in order to be heeded, she is as cruel as the rest of them. Circe’s niece Medea undergoes a similar development: when Circe first meets her, Medea does not hesitate to condemn her father, Aeëtes, as evil. Yet Medea eventually follows her father’s footsteps, showing the same readiness to spill blood for pride and vengeance. After her husband Jason leaves her, Medea burns his new wife alive before killing her and Jason’s own children. As Circe notes, Medea “had grown up trained around [Aeëtes’s] cruelty, and in the end it seem[s] she ha[s] not learned how to hold another shape.” In other words, although Medea recognizes and disapproves of her family’s cruelty, she easily falls into their same patterns of behavior.

But a few characters are able to break their families’ vicious cycles of cruelty by confronting their own flaws and ending their complicity in their families’ wickedness. Circe hates her family but nevertheless finds herself mirroring her father’s cruelty and vanity, which is especially apparent by her transformation of the nymph Scylla into a monster. Upon learning that Scylla eats humans, Circe knows that she is responsible for the deaths of countless mortals. Instead of dismissing her crimes (as Pasiphaë does) as simply her way of surviving in the world created by her parents, she nurtures her guilt and empathy—feelings that are foreign to her family members—for others’ pain and loss. These feelings are what motivate her to kill Scylla—a violent act in itself, but one that puts an end to Circe’s participation in her family’s cycle of violence. Symbolically, she then gives up her immortality, leaving her family for good. Telemachus similarly resents his family, namely his father, Odysseus. Telemachus is consumed with guilt over his complicity in Odysseus’s brutal schemes—especially when, at Odysseus’s orders, he murders the serving girls who were raped by Telemachus’s mother, Penelope’s, suitors. Like Circe, Telemachus keeps his guilt close. His regret and empathy for others are what set him apart from Odysseus, who is thoughtless in his grabs for power and fame. Telemachus refuses to be like his father, a decision epitomized in his refusing Athena, Odysseus’s patron, when she orders him to make an empire in the west. Unlike proud Odysseus, Telemachus chooses a quiet, nonviolent life.

The first character in the novel to defy their family is Prometheus, who sacrifices himself to eternal torture so that mortals can benefit from “all the arts and profits of civilization.” Prometheus defies Zeus, whom his Titan relatives defer to, by giving humans fire—something that Zeus kept from them to prevent them from forming civilizations, knowing that living difficult, uncomfortable lives would make humans give more homage to the gods. It is Prometheus’s defiance of Zeus that shows Circe that “Not every god need be the same” and inspires her to be different as well. But beyond the impact that Prometheus’s rebellion has on Circe, his action suggests that sacrifice is necessary to truly separate oneself from one’s family. Just as Prometheus sacrifices himself to unending pain, Circe relinquishes her immortality, and Telemachus gives up glory. They must sacrifice the advantages that they inherit from their family (divine power and fame) to break away from their families and their families’ faults.

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Family and Individuality Quotes in Circe

Below you will find the important quotes in Circe related to the theme of Family and Individuality.
Chapter 4 Quotes

I was too wild to feel any shame. It was true. I would not just uproot the world, but tear it, burn it, do any evil I could to keep Glaucos by my side. But what stayed most in my mind was the look on my grandmother’s face when I’d said that word, pharmaka. It was not a look I knew well, among the gods. But I had seen Glaucos when he spoke of the levy and empty nets and his father. I had begun to know what fear was. What could make a god afraid? I knew that answer too.

A power greater than their own.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Glaucos, Tethys
Page Number: 45-46
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

My face was hot. “I suppose I should take you as my tutor and deny everything?”

“Yes,” [Aeëtes] said. “That is how it works, Circe. I tell father that my sorcery was an accident, he pretends to believe me, and Zeus pretends to believe him, and so the world is balanced. It is your own fault for confessing. Why you did that, I will never understand.”

It was true, he would not. He had not been born when Prometheus was whipped.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Aeëtes (speaker), Prometheus, Helios, Scylla, Zeus
Page Number: 75-76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“Tell me,” he said, “who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?”

“A happy one, of course.”

“Wrong,” he said. “A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.” […]

“So this is how Olympians spend their days. Thinking of ways to make men miserable.”

“There’s no cause for righteousness,” he said. “Your father is better at it than anyone.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Hermes (speaker), Prometheus, Helios, Scylla, Zeus
Page Number: 96-97
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 11 Quotes

[Pasiphaë’s] words were falling on my head like a great cataract. I could scarcely take them in. She hated our family? She had always seemed to me their distillation, a glittering monument to our blood’s vain cruelty. Yet it was true what she said: nymphs were allowed to work only through the power of others. They could expect none for themselves.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Pasiphaë, The Minotaur, Minos
Page Number: 147
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 21 Quotes

“You pity me. Do not. My father lied about many things, but he was right when he called me a coward. I let him be what he was for year after year, raging and beating the servants, shouting at my mother, and turning our house to ash. He told me to help him kill the suitors and I did it. Then he told me to kill all the men who had aided them, and I did that too. Then he commanded me to gather up all the slave girls who had ever lain with one of them and […] kill them as well.” […]

“I hanged them” […] Each word was like a blade he thrust into himself. “I had never seen it done […] I had some thought that it must be more proper. I should have used the sword instead. I have never known such ugly drawn-out deaths. I will see their feet twisting the rest of my days.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Telemachus (speaker), Scylla, Odysseus, Penelope
Page Number: 308-309
Explanation and Analysis:

An owl passed its wings over my head. I heard the sound of scuffling brush, the beak snap, A mouse had died for its carelessness. I was glad Telemachus would not know of those words between me and his father. At the time I had been boasting, showing off my ruthlessness. I had felt untouchable, filled with teeth and power. I scarcely remembered what that was like.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Telegonus, Telemachus, Odysseus, Athena
Page Number: 310
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Penelope’s face was bent to the floor. “I have, goddess. He is set in his course. You know his father’s blood was always stubborn.”

“Stubborn in achievement.” Athena snapped each word like a dove’s neck. “In ingenuity. What is this degeneracy? […] I do not make this offer again. If you persist in this foolishness, if you refuse me, all my glory will leave you. Even if you beg I will not come.”

“I understand,” he said.

His calmness seemed to rage her. “There will be no songs made of you. No stories. Do you understand? You will live a life of obscurity. You will be without a name in history. You will be no one.” […]

“I choose that fate,” he said.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Telemachus (speaker), Athena (speaker), Penelope (speaker), Odysseus
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

“Her name,” he said. “Scylla. It means the Render. Perhaps it was always her destiny to be a monster, and you were only the instrument.”

“Do you use the same excuse for the maids you hanged?”

It was as if I had struck him. “I make no excuse for that. I will wear that shame all my life. I cannot undo it, but I will spend my days wishing I could.”

“It is how you know you are different from your father,” I said.

“Yes.” His voice was sharp.

“It is the same for me,” I said. “Do not try to take my regret from me.”

He was quiet a long time. “You are wise,” he said.

“If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes […] I must tell you, all my past is like today, monsters and horrors no one wants to hear.”

He held my gaze. […]

“I want to hear,” he said.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Telemachus (speaker), Scylla, Odysseus, Trygon
Page Number: 373-374
Explanation and Analysis: