Circe is a novel about power, showing how the quest for power often leaves a chain of abuse in its wake. Circe is set in mythological ancient Greece and depicts the brutal worlds of gods and mortals, both of which embody a dog-eat-dog mentality: in order to survive (or, for the immortals, thrive), one must trample on others or else be trampled on. As a result, power is an obsession for humans and gods alike, with characters using whatever means necessary to eke out power for themselves. Throughout the story, there are three roles that come into play when power is used: the one who wields power, the one whom the person with power dominates, and the ones who suffer collateral damage. Circe, the main character, experiences and witnesses each one of these roles as she makes her way from the halls of the gods, where she is bullied and manipulated by other immortals, and through the world of humans, who jealously guard whatever power they possess. In depicting Circe’s story, the novel shows power to be “a great chain of fear,” with each level abusing those beneath it.
Ancient Greece’s many hierarchies show how a society becomes obsessed with power. The novel quickly establishes that ancient Greece is constructed of power hierarchies: gods over mortals, royalty over subjects, men over women. Those on the higher rungs of the power ladder exercise control over those below them. This power structure has deep roots: eons ago, the Titan Kronos ate his children out of fear of being overthrown, and the ensuing war between Zeus and his siblings (the Olympians) and Titans like Kronos is foundational to their society. This kind of power struggle is also apparent in Zeus sentencing Prometheus to everlasting torture because Prometheus gave humans fire, which was a way of giving them power that Zeus didn’t want them to have. Fear has a primary role in power hierarchies, as those on top, who are afraid to lose their power, use fear to maintain their control over others. For instance, when Circe’s brother Aeëtes tells their father, Helios, that he and his siblings have powers that are “not bound by the usual limits of gods,” Helios is panicked. After discussing with Zeus on how best to manage these capabilities, they exile Circe so that she may be an example of what happens to those whose powers threaten the hierarchy.
In a world where one must use others or be used, characters rush to exert control over the people around them. With every occasion being an opportunity to accumulate power, interpersonal relationships—such as the one between Pasiphaë (Circe’s sister) and Minos—become races for dominance. Pasiphaë knows that Minos only wants her as “a simpering jelly he keeps in a jar and breeds to death,” so she does her best to stay one step ahead of him. She uses her poisons to keep him at heel and even gives birth to the Minotaur, a man-eating monster, so that it may be “her whip to use against Minos.” No bonds are sacred when power is on the line. The novel is also full of family members using each other in attempts to get ahead. Marriages are especially used toward this end, with Helios giving Pasiphaë to a son of Zeus to maintain their alliance, and Aeëtes looking for “some sorcerer-god” to be his daughter Medea’s husband, as he hopes to exchange her for “exotic poisons.” In the cutthroat culture depicted in the story, even those who are not grappling for power are endangered, as anyone can become collateral damage in someone else’s quest for more dominance. Odysseus treats those around him in this manner. When he returns to Ithaca, Odysseus murders not just his wife’s suitors, but also everyone connected with them (such as the serving girls whom the suitors raped), to demonstrate what happens to those who challenge his status.
Because everyone lives in fear of losing power, the cycle of power and abuse continues uninterrupted. Circe is a perfect example of how hard it is to break the cycle. She hates the heartless violence spawned from others’ race for power, but she feels that she has no choice but to play a part, since she herself is relatively powerless and needs power to protect herself. Circe learns the hard way that she suffers when she is kind, such as when a ship arrives at her island and she welcomes sailors into her home. Seeing that she is a woman alone, the men begin raping her. Traumatized, Circe turns all men who arrive on Aiaia into pigs. This tactic protects her and proves (to both herself and others) that she is not weak. She has internalized Pasiphaë’s words, that “The only thing that makes [others] listen is power.” In another show of power and fear, Circe cuts off Trygon’s poison tail to use it as Telegonus’s protection against Athena. Circe feels horribly guilty for taking Trygon’s tail, but she prioritizes protecting her son’s life over not causing another being’s suffering. Trygon therefore becomes collateral damage in Circe’s move to intimidate Athena.
The “great chain of fear” is so woven into the fabric of ancient Greek society that even its few disruptions never destroy it. At the story’s end, Circe is so sick of the violence she witnesses that she decides to end her participation in the cycle of power and abuse, choosing to give up her powers and become a mortal. As a mortal, Circe hopes to help other humans, therefore contributing to “the simple mending of the world.” While her actions will undoubtedly help some, they will not dismantle the system of power and abuse that she tries to leave; the other gods, filled with “spite and malice,” still remain in power. In this way, the story suggests that unless all of those with disproportionate power willingly give it up, the world will continue to suffer the terror and violence produced by the competition for power.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Power, Fear, and Self-Preservation ThemeTracker
Power, Fear, and Self-Preservation Quotes in Circe
I had heard by then the stories whispered among my cousins, of what [mortals] might do to nymphs they caught alone. The rapes and ravishments, the abuses. I found it hard to believe. They looked weak as mushroom gills. They kept their faces carefully down, away from all those divinities. Mortals had their own stories, after all, of what happened to those who mixed with gods. An ill-timed glance, a foot set in an impropitious spot, such things could bring down death and woe upon their families for a dozen generations.
It was like a great chain of fear, I thought. Zeus at the top and my father just behind. Then Zeus’ siblings and children, then my uncles, and on down through all the ranks of river-gods and brine-lords and Furies and Winds and Graces, until it came to the bottom where we sat, nymphs and mortals both, eying each other.
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.
[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.”
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.
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.
“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.”
“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.
“I am no child to him. I was his to dispose of, like his seed-warriors or his fire-breathing bulls. Like my mother, whom he dispatched as soon as she bore him an heir. Perhaps it might have been different if I’d had no witchcraft. But by the time I was ten I could tame adders from their nests, I could kill lambs with a word and bring them back with another. He punished me for it. He said it made me unmarketable, but in truth, he did not want me taking his secrets to my husband.”
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.
How would you know? I wanted to say. Often those men in most need hate most to be grateful, and will strike at you just to feel whole again.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
