It has been a good read for me overall and I enjoy what has been going on so far with Circe. She reminds me lowkey of a sorceress or a witch. She does all these enchantments and turns men into pigs while doing them. To me, it seems she does not want anything to do with men until she meets Odysseus, which in my eyes was fantastic. Usually, it takes one person to overturn a hatred r feeling against other people, and Odysseus did just that by faking Circe out. When reading this, I had a vivid image of what Circe would actually look like and I had to look it up for myself. Honestly, it is not what I expected. I am enjoying the read so far and am looking forward to what happens next as she uses more "witchcraft."
Circe
6 discussions
I think that a very interesting aspect of Circe is her intensely unhealthy and deeply troubling sexual encounters. In the Odyssey, Circe tells Odysseus that "through making love [they] may begin to trust each other more." But the sexual relationship that they do end up having hardly fosters trust- Odysseus still makes Circe swear an oath not to kill him and the whole situation feels transactional. In Metamorphoses, we see a similar situation where Circe wants the attentions of Glaucus and when she cannot have them, she lashes out by turning the genitals of Glaucus' love into monsters. Circe strikes me as a deeply insecure goddess, which is rare when we compare her to Athena, Aphrodite, or Artemis, who are many things but are unwaveringly confident. It feels like Circe, all alone on her island, views sex as her only currency, even though she has vast magical abilities. I think all of this makes Circe a sympathetic character, even if she is a destructive one.
Okay, I may be nerding out a bit. I. LOVE. CIRCE. And the way that she respects herself and her craft makes me smile. I half expected the stories to have the main stream version of witchcraft, but it was actually fairly realistic. Of course, modern day witches can't transform you, but we do use waters and herbs and even wands to direct our personal energy in a stronger way. And I have become addicted to reading Circe by Madeline Miller. I may or may not have read past what we had to already and I fully intend on finishing it. Her witchcraft is more fantasied because of her divinity, but part of me does wish I could turn my enemies into frogs.
I see Circe as more of a lonely character who is also not used to men standing up to her. She found it so easy to drug the first of Odysseus's men and turn them to pigs and I'm sure it been easy with the many men before that as well. When Odysseus was not phased by her drugs she was so amazed and automatically attracted to him. I get the feeling that she has been waiting a long time for a man to be worthy enough to finally resist her schemes.
I don't think Circe is necessarily a good character, but I believe she has a few redeeming qualities- at least, more redeeming qualities than some of the other people in the Odyssey. Obviously turning men into pigs isn't a great thing to do, but it was nice of her to turn them back. After reading this story, I think that Circe feels that men are dumb, or maybe she legitimately thinks of them as pigs. Odysseus, however, surprises her, and she views him as worthy of her time and gives him a chance. She even completes his requests after he outsmarts her with the help of Hermes. As enchantresses go, I think she's pretty good. Although she turns them to pigs, she does change them back and even lets them leave eventually.
At the beginning of this part of the play, Odysseus' men show a great example of jealousy and how being bitter can really come back to hurt you. Odysseus's men saw the rewards that Odysseus was given, and how they didn't get a reward for doing the same thing. Being jealous, they took the bag of wind that great Aeolus gave him to get back to Ithica. They didn't understand that the bag was full of air and opened it to pack it full of gold. The wind came flushing out of the bag and pushed the ship away from Ithica, which was in view, all the way back to where they began their journey. Aeolus didn't want to give them another bag because their greed doomed them, instead, he demanded they leave his island and never return. They spent a very long time traveling towards home and ran into several challenges.