Circe

by

Madeline Miller

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Mortality, Fragility, and Fulfillment Theme Analysis

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.
Mortality, Fragility, and Fulfillment Theme Icon

Circe explores the differences between gods and humans. The novel follows Circe from her beginnings as a bullied nymph in her father Helios’s halls, to Aiaia, her island of exile, where she encounters gods and mortals alike. As the story progresses, Circe’s life becomes intertwined with mortals: she falls in love with mortal men, thwarts the attacks of mortal sailors, and even gives birth to a mortal child. At the same time, Circe distances herself from the gods, whom she knows to be spiteful, cruel, and egotistical. Although she learns that mortals can be just as wicked as gods, Circe finds that mortals, with their fragility, imperfections, and finite existence, are better able to appreciate their lives. After she knows herself to be in love with Telemachus (a mortal), Circe decides to transfigure herself into a mortal, too. Her decision paints immortality as a curse, rather than a blessing. Through Circe’s decision to give up her divinity in order to become mortal, the book demonstrates that, by its nature, immortality strips away the things—such as empathy, personal growth, and connection—that give meaning to life.

Because the immortal gods never fear for their existence and rarely experience pain, they have no sense of compassion for those who do. While there are instances when a god is in pain (such as when Prometheus is tortured), the majority of immortals do not experience pain—and if they do, they heal quickly. As Circe puts it, “There is nothing more foreign to them” than suffering. And because the gods have no knowledge of pain, they have no empathy for those who experience it. In fact, they are more likely to be excited by someone else’s suffering, as is seen when Prometheus is tortured; the other gods are thrilled to see his agony, and no one stops it. Protected by their immortality, gods have no empathy for mortals and are generally dismissive of mortals’ lives and deaths. When a god does care about a specific mortal—as in Athena’s interest for Odysseus—the god treats the mortal as a tool to gain personal satisfaction. Instead of letting Odysseus settle into a peaceful life after the Trojan War, Athena provokes him, hoping to incite him to action, but ultimately causing his demise. Odysseus’s happiness doesn’t matter; rather, he is simply a source of amusement to Athena, for whom “He must live in action’s eye [...] always delighting her with some new twist of cleverness.” By contrast, mortals—since they can die—are inherently vulnerable, and it is this vulnerability that generates both gratitude and empathy. This is most clearly established with Glaucos, who is a mortal before Circe transforms him into a god. As a mortal, he is gracious and kindhearted; fearing starvation, he is appreciative when Circe helps bring him good fishing. He knows how benevolence improves his life, so he is kind to Circe in return. But when he becomes a god, his tenderness evaporates. He chooses to forget his “burdened” mortal life and, in doing so, loses his compassion and becomes cruel toward others: he kills his mortal father, withholds help from his former village until he sees their offerings, and coldly rejects Circe’s friendship and love.

While gods do not have to work, mortals must labor in order to live, but their existences are richer because of it. With “excellences already bursting from their fingertips,” gods have no need to work. Ignorant of labor—and the fulfillment that accompanies it—gods spend their eternities idly existing. When they want attention, they gain renown “by proving what they can mar.” The gods honor (which is to say, fear) their fellow gods’ ability to destroy more than their ability to create. Mortals are the opposite—with no supernatural power, they must work to live. Through labor, mortals learn the value of “practice and diligence” and enjoy the accompanying sense of achievement. As Circe notes, it is through the “tending [of] their skills” that mortals gain fame. Furthermore, to achieve their success, mortals must try and fail repeatedly. Throughout the story, scars are used to represent how this failure leads to personal growth. Both Odysseus and Daedalus are scarred because of their experiences—Odysseus from years of battle, and Daedalus from attempted inventions. Circe sees these scars as their “name[s] stitched into [their] skin,” suggesting that a mortal’s failures and consequential growth are integral to their identity. Because the gods never experience failure, they never grow, which is reflected in the “smooth sameness” of their skin.

With their eternal life, gods are easily jaded, which diminishes their ability to form deep emotional connections. Because the gods live forever, they become uninterested by the people and events around them. It is for this reason that “gods love nothing more than novelty.” Helios marries Circe’s mother, Perse, not for love, but because she puts constraints on their relationship, which is new to him and therefore exciting. Hermes’s relationship with Circe is similar in that he is only interested in her insofar as she excites him with challenges. Even Circe experiences this indifference toward others as, after hundreds of years of living, the people she meets “yellow and fade as everything faded in the endless wash of centuries.” Daunted by how meaningless it feels to care about people when faced with eternity, Circe finds herself tempted into the same lack of interest in others that the other gods have.

But, in the end, Circe resists, for it is only when she feels love that she feels joy. Instead of giving up her capacity to connect with others, Circe gives up her immortality. For Circe, love, personal growth, and empathy—all of which are rarely found among the gods—are integral to life. As she puts the transformative potion to her lips, she realizes that, although she once thought that “gods are the opposite of death,” she realizes that “they are more dead than anything,” for they never really live.

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Mortality, Fragility, and Fulfillment ThemeTracker

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

Below you will find the important quotes in Circe related to the theme of Mortality, Fragility, and Fulfillment.
Chapter 5 Quotes

[Glaucos] pushed me from him. His face was caught, half in anger, half in a sort of fear. He looked almost like his old self […]

“No!” He slashed his hand through the air. “I will not think on those days. Every hour some new bruise upon me, some new ache, always weary, always burdened and weak. I sit at councils with your father now. I do not have to beg for every scrap. Nymphs clamor for me, and I may choose the best among them, which is Scylla.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Glaucos (speaker), Helios, Scylla
Related Symbols: Scars
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Witchcraft is nothing but such drudgery […] Day upon patient day, you must throw out your errors and begin again. So why did I not mind? Why did none of us mind?

I cannot speak for my brothers and sister, but my answer is easy. For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay.

Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Aeëtes, Pasiphaë, Perses
Page Number: 84
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 10 Quotes

This was how mortal found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like garden until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Ariadne
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. [Odysseus] shook his head. “How would I know myself?”

I was secretly glad. They suited him. Enduring Odysseus, he was, and the name was stitched into his skin. Whoever saw him must salute and say: There is a man who has seen the world. There is a captain with stories to tell.

I might have told him, in those hours, stories of my own […] His face would be intent as he listened, his relentless mind examining, weighing and cataloguing […] He would gather my weaknesses up and set them with the rest of his collection, alongside Achilles’ and Ajax’s. He kept them on his person as other men keep their knives.

I looked down at my body […] and tried to imagine it written over with its history: my palm with its lightning streak, my hand missing its fingers, the thousand cuts from my witch-work, the gristled furrows of my father’s fire […] And those were only the things that had left marks.

There would be no salutes. What had Aeëtes called an ugly nymph? A stain upon the face of the world.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Odysseus (speaker), Aeëtes, Achilles
Related Symbols: Scars
Page Number: 215
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:

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 27 Quotes

I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. Beside me, my husband's pulse beats at his throat; in their beds, my children's skin shows every faintest scratch. A breeze would blow them over, and the world is filled with more than breezes: diseases and disasters, monsters and pain in a thousand variations […] How can I live on beneath such a burden of doom? […]

Circe, [Telemachus] says, it will be all right.

I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Telemachus (speaker)
Page Number: 384-385
Explanation and Analysis: