Circe by Madeline Miller

The myths taught us to treat Circe like a warning label: temptress, witch, monster. We’re not buying it. Tonight we step into Madeline Miller’s Circe and look at what happens when the so-called villain is finally allowed to speak in a full human voice. 

With our guest Lyndi Whetzel, we trace Circe’s long arc from Helios’s obsidian palace, where she’s mocked, managed, and kept useful, to exile on Aeaea, where witchcraft becomes less about domination and more about survival. Along the way we dig into divine cruelty, patriarchal power, loneliness, revenge, and the way “transformation” keeps showing up as both magic and metaphor. We also talk about why Miller’s writing makes centuries feel intimate, and why familiar Greek mythology landmarks still land with surprise when the perspective shifts. 

Then we get honest about the hard parts: violence wrapped in heroic stories, the danger of craving worship, and the moment Circe stops living as a reaction to everyone else’s energy. Motherhood raises the stakes, Athena sharpens the threat, and sacrifice becomes the clearest measure of love in a world that rarely rewards it. 

If you love Greek mythology retellings, feminist literature, or character-driven fantasy that refuses simple heroes and villains, hit play. Subscribe, share the episode with a fellow reader, and leave us a review with your take: is immortality a gift, or just another prison?

Transcript

Guest Lindy Joins The Fire

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Welcome back. Tonight on Lit on Fire, we descend into the world of divinity, monsters, and men. But not from the perspective of the heroes history chose to remember. We're talking about Cersei by Madeline Miller, a novel that takes one of mythology's most infamous witches and asks a dangerous question What if the monster was never the villain at all? Banished to a lonely island, Cersei begins to master witchcraft, not as a path to domination, but as survival. And that's where the novel catches fire. Because Cersei isn't just about magic. It's about what happens to women who refuse to remain useful, silent, decorative, or obedient. This is a story about transformation, literal and metaphorical. Men become pigs, gods become cruel caricatures of power, love becomes both salvation and destruction, and Cersei herself becomes something mythology rarely allows women to be. Complicated, powerful, angry, tender, human. But here's the real spark at the center of this novel. Is Cersei becoming herself or simply matching the energy of each moment? Tonight, we're diving into divine cruelty, motherhood, isolation, immortality, revenge, agency, and the price of carving out an identity in a world determined to define you first. We'll ask whether empathy makes Cersei stronger or weaker, whether monsters are created or revealed, and whether immortality is a gift or just another prison with prettier walls. Because Cersei doesn't just retell mythology, it drags myth into the fire and asks, who got burned to make legends possible. Okay, so Peter is going to do our synopsis for tonight, but before we do that, we have to acknowledge that we are so excited to have a guest with us on our show, and that is Lindy Wetzel, Peter's better half.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Oh, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

And she's joining us tonight because this is one of her favorite books of all time, and she has been advocating for a very long time that we read this and discuss it on our podcast. And so she's joining us.

Synopsis And The Core Wound

SPEAKER_02 3:10

And we are so excited to have her here. So Peter's going to take us through a synopsis, and then we're all three gonna be able to talk about this book and have a great time with it. So go ahead, Peter.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Okay, so Cersei is a goddess. She is the daughter of a nymph, Perse, and the sun god Helios. She is their firstborn. But right away, when she is born, she is a disappointment to them. They criticize pretty much everything about her: her nose, her skin color, her hair color, and in particular her voice, because she sounds, instead of like a goddess, she sounds like a human. And so they're constantly saying that she sounds like an owl screeching and things like that. She's pretty much made fun of by her other siblings. She's ostracized and avoided by all of her relatives. And overall, she's just treated like a burden her entire life. She grows up in Helios' palace in this kind of gilded cage, gets to see very little of the world or have any experiences of her own. And she lives this existence until she has a brief encounter with her uncle Prometheus just before he is punished for giving mankind fire. And she talks with him about mortals and why he helped the mortals and what mortals are like. And she automatically develops this kinship with his attitude towards mortals and compassion towards mortals. And eventually she meets a mortal and develops a friendship, kind of an infatuation with him. It leads her to make some poor choices out of desperation and jealousy, which ultimately leads to her punishment by Zeus and Helios and her exile to the island of Aya, and subsequently all the elements of her story that we're more familiar with from the Odyssey and her development as a person and as a woman and as a witch.

Making A Witch Fully Human

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Right. And of course, we get a lot of other stories that are worked in there as well. And I love just how this whole story comes together. So we're gonna start out like we always do with Kopile, and that brings us into talking about the characters in the book. And of course, I love Cersei. I feel like we see her as the evil witch that holds Odysseus captive, and that's how she's been framed for most people that read the Odyssey, and certainly for if you're a freshman in most high schools in the United States, that's how you look at Cersei when you read her. That is not how she is in this book. And I love how Madeline Miller just gives her a fully rounded character and then really brings in a lot of those other, maybe familiar mythological characters with a lot more roundness and dimension. So, Lindy, what was your take when you first read it?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Well, I the first time I read it, I kind of saw her character, especially the way she starts out in the book and went, oh my God, this book is about me. Yeah. She brought so much humility, a true human personality to her. She felt very real. Her identity with her family and the struggle of feeling like she doesn't belong felt very human. I feel like there's every single person has felt like they don't belong somewhere that they wish they did. I think that's like a universal truth for all of us, and one of the things that should bring us together, but ultimately usually tears us apart from one another. So I just felt like it was like looking in a mirror, especially with the beginning of her journey. And that's one of the things that hooked me on the book from page one that really made me fall in love with her in particular.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Yeah, I think that Cersei is the character of this book.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

I mean, she is the focal point. We get an incredible amount of, like you said, humanity from her and developments, empathy for her, and her inner struggles, too. And I think that that really defines every other character in the book for me. It's her relationship with them. There are other characters that are fleshed out a little bit more like her son Telegamas and others later on, but none more so than Cersei herself. She is the center of this whole story.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Yeah, she's literally the center of gravity that everything is, you know, circulating around and she's drawing everyone closer in as they develop.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

As far as atmosphere goes, this sort of also leads into the writing style discussion, but God, Madeline Miller is so good with her descriptions. When she's talking about how Cersei is walking around the Palace of Helios, which is like underground and it's made completely of obsidian, and the difference between when her father Helios is there and his light is shining off of all the walls, and then the darkness that he leaves behind, the court and this describing of this courtly lifestyle and her sort of outsider-looking in viewpoint of it. I got a great sense of that. All the island of Oya and everything, I thought she really develops a really beautifully poetic atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

One of my favorite things about Helios' palace and her interactions with it, like you said, the obsidian walls are really like an interesting like visual, but also the fact that she spends her days making the little holes in the sand because there's the black, you know, obsidian sand that lines court. And every night when her father comes home, the vibrations from his larger-than-life presence and footsteps smooths over all of the progress she made throughout the day of making her little holes, which are the only mark that she's able to leave upon her world for arguably the longest portion of her life because she spends centuries essentially feeling trapped and not knowing herself or who she is in that palace. And I thought that that was really kind of a powerful description in how invisible she is.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

That's a good point. And I really think that's also the way that Madeline Miller helps us experience the eons of time that pass in this book from her perspective. It was really well done as well. I mean, she is older than I can say by the end of this book. Essentially, her life begins at almost the dawn of the Greek gods' reign, right?

Madeline Miller’s Magnetic Style

SPEAKER_00 8:40

We go through multiple ages of heroes too. She mentions along the way the Bronze Age, the Gilded Age, you know. So we we do get to see some time frame.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Right. Well, bridging over into her writing style, one of the things I love is that she takes very familiar things. As you said, we go through generations of heroes and we go through very familiar places, and everything is just such a different perspective and a different take. Like going through the channel where Scylla is, that we see everything in this new light through Cersei's eyes and the way Madeline Miller writes it. I was not bored by this book. I think I said in my little wreck on the run the other day that Greek mythology books for me have a sense of the Titanic that I know what's going to happen. And so sometimes I don't want to pick them up and I don't want to read them, and I think that's why I resisted Cersei for so long. But the thing that Madeline Miller does is really take that and transform all of these atmospheres and these scenes and all of these points, and she makes it into something new and unique. And her writing style just really elevates it and transforms it and evolves it as she develops Cersei's character. And so for me, her writing style is excellent in this particular genre. When I read other things like Jennifer Saint's novel, Jennifer Saint is great, but I just did not feel that transformation as much with Ariadne as I did reading Cersei.

Plot Inversions And Why It Works

SPEAKER_00 10:10

And I think the fact that she does pull in so many recognizable moments helps with that too. Because even someone like me, the only exposure I've really had to the Greek, you know, retelling's world was starting with Rick Riordan as a young person, you know, and in middle school reading his series on the matter. And then of course reading the Odyssey and the Iliad and everything too, as like original source material. There were so many things that, you know, piqued my interest throughout the book, and they were kind of like lighthouses along the way to kind of orient you to where we are in the world and what's going on. And I think that was so smart of her because a lot of the things that Cersei was involved in throughout this novel, we never would have even thought to place her in because she wasn't in the canon stories, you know, from the time. All right. So going into plot, excellent.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Yeah. Well, I mean, it all goes into what we were just saying is the fact that we take this very little information that we give have about this mythological person and placing it in the familiar history, we flesh out this life and this whole character. And the plot really is about Cersei being made human, being made real, not only to us, but also to herself, finding herself and finding her place and her purpose in the world. Not just as the daughter of Helios that no one really respects.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Right. And in that way, the plot is very turned on its head from your traditional Greek hero story on one level, because like Hercules wants to become a god, right? And to a certain extent, we watch Cersei go on the opposite journey. Right. And that is a really fascinating take on a Greek tale and really following someone through these generations and these hundreds of years, and we go for becoming more human, not less human, right? That immortality is less desirable.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Right. And you even see that happen in the story itself. I mean, the first thing that she really like comes across is feels like she has to solve a problem and she's desperate to solve it, the way she solves it is by making someone immortal. And she sees Godhood as the solution to happiness and to finding yourself and turning someone into their true self, which is a huge theme of the book. And so I think that even in that first act, we kind of get to see where we're going with the plot, you know, where we're going with the book. And that that was the first true misstep.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Right. Intrigue, lots of intrigue. Greek mythology always has intrigue. We're steeped in intrigue. I don't think, you know, you'll get bored with this book at all. Like I said, there are enough, you said beautifully, there are enough, you know, lighthouses along the way to be familiar enough to guide us, but there are also plenty of surprises and plenty of intrigue that's there that you would be unfamiliar with as well. So the intrigue drives you through the story.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

And I really feel like her pacing was perfect too. Because even in the quieter moments of the novel, like the hundreds of years she spends on Ayah alone learning her witchcraft, that could have become very tedious to read because you know she's not interacting with other people. No one is coming in to drive the plot forward, but the way that she paced it was so perfect that you never really get a sense of dullness. You never lose interest.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Because it's important. Yes. It's actually a very important character development aspect for her. Right. That it becomes kind of a living, breathing thing, the loneliness does instead of being this boring aspect of her life. Right. So logic, I found it to be very logical. It fits. And when I measure logic in this particular book, I measure it against mythology and does it match up thematically with the mythology? Do they stay on track with who these gods are and what was going on? They do. Is Cersei a believable character based on the actual factual knowledge we have of her and then what Madeline Miller does with her? Yes. And so I find everything that she does to be logical while also surprising and wonderful and ingenious. But the logic is there and consistent, so I don't feel like there's a huge leap made from the Greek mythology to where Madeline Miller goes.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

I never really found myself thinking, oh, well, that's stupid. Why did she do that? She wouldn't have done that. That's an unbelievable reaction. She does foolish things, but only in relationship to her emotional and mental development as a as a human being.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

And then finally, entertainment.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

Were we entertained?

SPEAKER_02 14:34

We were entertained. Were you entertained?

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Very entertained.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

All right. It was a really good book. I really did enjoy it. And I do really feel bad that I waited so long to read it because I just really worried that I wasn't going to like it. And I really was entertained. In fact, every time my kids came in up and interrupted me, which it's so like that. Like the moment you go to the bathroom and the kids come to the door, the moment I start reading, my kids interrupt me. And with reading Cersei, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm at a good part. Go away.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Right. Which draws back into the book and her motherhood journey. You know, all of her struggles with her motherhood seemed very relatable, even from the outside as someone who was not a mother.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

As another logic point, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

I love that part so much. So much to talk about after we get into our spoiler section.

SPEAKER_03 15:18

For those of you listening who just can't bring yourself to read a Greek retelling because you're just afraid they're going to be like the Titanic. I think we've already said this is not the Titanic.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

No, step out there and read this one because it's going to be okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

It's going to be okay.

Spoiler Line And Final Nudge

Lit On Fire Merch Break

SPEAKER_02 15:31

All right. And with that, we are going to transition from our spoiler-free section to our spoiler section, and we are going to have some fun with that. Okay, quick pause. Because if you're still listening, you clearly have excellent taste or questionable judgment. Either way, we've got something for you.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

That's right. Lit on Fire Merch is officially live. You can now wear your literary chaos proudly.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

We're talking bold designs, rebellious slogans, and just enough intellectual menace to make people nervous in public.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Hoodies, teas, all of it. Perfect for reading banned books or starting arguments at brunch.

Helios Palace And Patriarchy

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Go grab yours at LitOnFire Podcast-Shop.forthwall.com. Because if you're going to burn it all down, you might as well look good doing it. Lit on fire. So as we enter this spoiler section, I wanted to talk about Helios Palace because you both mentioned earlier the obsidian walls and the difference between when Helios arrives and his light bounces off of those walls, or when he's gone and they're dark. And what struck me as you were talking about that is that obsidian as a substance is supposed to represent protection and grounding and the ability to be in a protective truth area where there's more truth telling. And this idea of home should be that, right? The protected, grounded area. And the idea of dark and light. So from a traditional literature standpoint, when Helios is there, the sun provides light, right? That's typically warm. It's typically illuminating. It provides us with truth. It provides us with strength. It provides us with understanding, with knowledge. Light represents all these good things. And in darkness, we have ignorance, we have fear, we have all these things. Yet things are flipped a little bit because Helios is not necessarily nice. She does not necessarily feel grounded when Daddy is home. Maybe she does sometimes, maybe she doesn't. There's a lot of contradiction in what I would expect from both the substance chosen for the walls and also the imagery of the light and dark. And I love your perspective because getting into the family dynamics and the things that happen in that particular atmosphere, I find the details of Miller's description on the palace to be really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

Helias is the ultimate patriarchal presence in. He is. She has this kind of toxic relationship with him, this toxic desire to please him, to sit at his feet, and to just let her whole world revolve around him. And yet he is incredibly dismissive and condescending to her throughout the book.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Right. And that whole theme of protection and safety, I think she tries really hard for a very long time to make herself fit into that mold and feel that way, like going, like you said, beyond herself in, you know, trying to be that perfect subservient daughter. And she even says in either chapter one or chapter two that she could have gone along that way forever had her call to action never come because she was trying so hard. All of her desires were just to please her father so that she could feel the safety of his warmth. And I think that that's really telling, you know, in who she is and who the nymphs are as a whole in their like role in the society, you know, and that the only way that they can feel safe and protected is in under the light of a greater male figure.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

And I think at this point in the story, she wants to be more like a god than herself. She is not a nymph. Her mother is not really a god. She's only part god, and her sisters and her brothers sort of shun her. So she's kind of looking to the godhood of her father for her place and her purpose. But he's constantly diminishing that because he's so full of himself that he can't possibly give her any credit or any power.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Right. There is an element in the beginning of this story that I'm reminded of I Medusa and her relationship with her family in the same kind of I want to be accepted, I want to do what my Titan father wants me to do. I want to be relevant to him and his success and his purpose. And you do feel that with her, but you feel a stronger sense of she's never going to meet that desire.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

And I think that's evident from birth. You know, her family knows it, but she hasn't caught on yet. You know, they they from the moment she's born, her mother looks at her and goes, I can make a better one for you. You know, and I feel like that kind of formative experience and being able to remember your mother saying that, you know, from your birth would definitely scar you. And I think she tries to push that down for a lot longer than she probably should have, you know, and still tries to fit into the mold of what they want her to be. And I think it's a really good portrait of a narcissistic parent, too, on both sides, mother and father, kind of the female and male version of what that can look like. Right. Um, so a lot of people probably read the story and see themselves even in their family or in her family.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

And so she has these siblings that outshine her to a certain extent, and she is constantly kind of in this background role. So it is unsurprising when she transgresses and she decides to talk to Prometheus when he is drug in and he's been sentenced to suffer by Zeus, and she he's her uncle, and she decides to go over and speak with him, even though she should not, and she hears his story of humanity and she admires him, she feels for her uncle, but I feel like she also misses the point of what's happened there.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Probably so. And and also I think that even though what she's doing is a kindness, it's just as much for her and to make her feel better as it is she's trying to make him feel better because she's looking for a way to rebel against the gods who have shunned her. Right, and to do something of importance. Right.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Yeah, I think initially he's a curiosity to her, but more so because he's her first example of an act of sacrifice and an act of compassion, because she's never seen a god willingly sacrifice anything, let alone with the knowledge that there will be consequences.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Right, right. And I'd say it's even more interesting to her because of the act of defiance than sacrifice because up until this point, she feels like defiance is not an option. That is not something that is done or can be done. And I think getting that first example of it of defiance through sacrifice, not just for selfish means, is what really lights the spark in her that maybe there is something she can change about her circumstances.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

And it says something about the environment that she's grown up in that compassion itself is an act of defiance.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Right. Right. But initially she just I think seizes on that defiance because her first act of defiance is not based in compassion.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

No.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

And that's why I say I think she she missed the point. So she does develop this interest in humanity, and you alluded to then, you know. She develops an interest in immortal, that's where we get this, we kind of get a series or or couple actions that that kind of haunt her for the rest of the book.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Well, uh, and another example of her interest in humanity, and I do think she has some compassion, because when her father takes her to see the cows that he's so proud of and so very intimate with, he talks about how the astronomers who track his movements through the sky make predictions based on his movements, but when he decides to waylay or delay a little bit or be late or be early or whatever, then they are proven to be prods to their kings and they are beheaded, killed, or whatever. And he's kind of just amused by it. He's amused by the fact that he can have control over these simple mortals' lives. And she thinks about that and she's like, Have you delayed enough today for astronomers to get killed? And he says, Oh, yes. And she's horrified really by the fact that that these mortals' lives are so meaningless to the other gods.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Right. And so she doesn't, when she becomes infatuated with the mortals, she definitely doesn't want anything bad to happen to him. So I mean, that is that is a way in which she has gotten the compassion. She does not have compassion for the other nymphs or the gods.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

No.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

And so my point though would be that she makes selfish choices, even though she does have quote unquote compassion for the human that's involved.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

I think the factor that makes the most difference for her is this concept of death.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

That's the real horror in her mind, this idea of becoming smoke and dust and memory, which is how she describes, which is how Prometheus describes the ultimate end of every human.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Well, and I think when she does finally have her close encounter with immortal, with Glaucus, she not only sees him as this new and interesting person, and oh, I can finally experience what Prometheus told me about, but she finally, for the first time, understands what it feels like to be worshipped, the way that the gods love to be worshipped. And she even mentions that in, you know, when he's saying, Oh, thank you, goddess, thank you for sending me fish, you know, my my village is fed for the year, or whatever it is that he says to her, you know, that she feels that spark ignite inside of her of pride, that now I see what it is my father and my uncles strive for, what they live for. And I really think that that feeling, more so than anything else, is what leads her to fight for his immortality and if and eventually make him immortal herself. I love to say that it was something more selfless than that, you know, but I really think that that's what pushes her in that direction. And honestly, I understand in a way, because that was the first adoration she had ever felt in her entire life. The first kindness she had ever been shown, other than by Prometheus, um, when he was being tortured, was from this man that she decides she's gonna, you know, throw her life on the line for, which is very human. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

But what she fails to realize is his motivation as well, because she's given him things and he is grateful to her for the gifts and he adores her in that way. Once he no longer needs her, she becomes irrelevant.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Well, he's just like the gods in the sense that even though he's a human, he despises struggle and pain.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:10

And so when he is relieved of that burden, then he fits right in with all the other gods. I thought a really telling interaction was when she mentions that she was around when Prometheus was punished. And he's like, his reaction to that is just to be horrified. You can't, you can't be you that you that would make you thousands of years old. And he's like appalled and he's pulling away from her in fear. And you talk about one of the first examples of her trying to match the other person's energy and and diminish herself and not be herself and be something she's not. Oh, I I was just joking. Of course, of course, I'm your age. I'm the same, I'm just as old as you.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

And she has to change herself. Um, first warning sign if you have to change yourself, diminish yourself to be with someone else, not a smart choice. So he becomes this basically selfish asshole when he turns into an immortal. And she thinks that, well, now we can be together forever because she has developed this infatuation.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

And it's important to know how she does that.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

She believes that these flowers, where supposedly the blood of the gods and the titans fell on them and they grew, have this magical power to reveal a person's true self. And so she goes, she finds out from one of her uncles where some of them are, and she takes Glaucus there and she makes him lay down in the field. And when nothing happens, she gets angry and starts ripping them up, and she realizes that the sap on her hand, she can just feel in her spirit that if she places the sap inside of his mouth, then he will transform. And so she believes the power to transform is within these flowers.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

And that is how she first discovers her witchcraft. It's intuitive with her contact through nature and herbs.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

And so she turns him into his true self, quote unquote, and it's a selfish asshole. So then he starts being a man, except in god form now, and this is where we get Scylla as well.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

Who's this beautiful nymph? She's the mean girl in the court, and everybody sort of revolves around her, and she immediately gravitates to court towards Glaucus because he is the newest, most popular kid in school.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

He's the shiny new toy.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Yes, and of course Glaucus eats it all up. Right. And suddenly Cersei is yesterday's news.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

There's jealousy, as there will be, and she realizes hey, I transformed Glaucus. I know that inside her evil little heart, you know, Scylla is an ugly monster. So I can do the same thing to her, those flowers will reveal what she really is. And we get our hideous, hideous creature that's legendary.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Right. Her first legendary transformation. Yes. And and her first monstrous act of her own, you know, which ends up, like we said earlier, haunting her throughout the rest of her life. Because that deed, even though she felt like it would be something, you know, small in the moment, ends up having an effect for generations.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

And of course, when somebody doesn't love or respect you, just getting rid of their object of their affection isn't going to make them suddenly say, Hey, what about Cersei? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

He just moves on to the next thing. And so that is when she decides, okay, if I'm not going to get any respect, I'm going to tell everybody what I've done. And maybe they'll at least understand that I have power, that I had some kind of agency in the situation. And so she confesses to Helios.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Which does bring us back around to Prometheus as well, because one of the things about his story that she that resonated with her so much was that he turned himself in. He willingly went to his punishment. So she decides if that's the only noble person I've ever known, I will do the same thing that he did and be chained to the rock next to him, which of course her fate is very different from his, thank goodness. But she really feels like that's a noble act. And I think it's also very important to note what Glaucus' reaction to finding out that she changed him into a god, and it wasn't his own doing or his own fate to turn into a god, which was to run away and hide because the woman had more power than him. Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

And he's ashamed of that because what could be worse? Right, right. Right. So, in confessing this, of course, two things. You know, this is what ultimately leads to her being exiled, but it also leads to the revelation that no, there's no power just in the flowers.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

The power came from within.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Yeah, because at first no one believes her, because no one respects her. She's a woman, and the whole court laughs at her. And it takes the voice of a man, her brother, Aedes, to actually get people to listen and believe that she actually did do this because he reveals that all of Perse's children have some witchcraft in them, and Cersei isn't the only one.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

Right. And so when it's revealed, then Cersei is punished because now she's dangerous and she has to be gotten rid of on some level.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

Yeah. But none of the other children are punished. No. But she's punished because she is seen as having used her power against her own kind.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

And she is also disposable because she's already been marginalized and she is unliked. So make an example of the already disposable, unliked child, and we will put everyone in their place, and these other children will be marketable because of the power and their overall appearance and their likability.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

The power which they will only use against humans.

Exile To Aia And Hermes

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Right. And gladly so, right? But we'll get rid of this disobedient child who clearly has used her power in a dangerous way, which would be reminiscent of the Titans and the gods and all of the war that had taken place before. So, and we remove her in that moment. So that transfers our atmosphere to Ayah. And, you know, in Helios' palace, we see this beginning of Cersei really matching the energy of people around her. Scylla's petty, Cersei's petty. We get to Ayah. When Cersei's alone, she begins to discover who she is as a witch. And these are moments where we begin to see where her strengths lie. And those are some of my favorite moments in the book early on when she is on her own and she is exploring that island and she's connecting with the animals. I love her lion.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

And she is really feeling out to the extent of her power and her knowledge in herself. They're beautiful moments, but they cannot last because inevitably, people inevitably men. Men, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

Enter Hermes.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

He's ooh. I have a lot of friends where Hermes is their favorite god. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Hermes is the Greek Loki. And I think there's that appeal, probably.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Yeah, I suppose so. He's annoying to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

I mean, he definitely helped drive the story forward in places because he was bringing her the news of the outside world that she was so desperate for, you know, because she needed that connection, especially early on, because she went from being surrounded by other divinity to being completely alone. But yeah, he he definitely um that that comment he makes in the end on their last meeting just really solidified that ew factor about the nymphs. And what does he say? They're they're so easy to catch or something like that. You always catch them in the end, which is her final straw for him, of course. Right. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Right. But I do think it was an important relationship for her to have because for the first time she was interacting with a man that she didn't feel the need to bow to, to sit at his feet. She was totally okay in herself to, you know, only give what she wanted to give and to deny him the things that he wanted, which I think was important, especially later on, once we see her interacting with uh Daedalus and then Odysseus.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

But I think it lolls her into a false sense of security on one level. That's true. Because as Zeus's messenger, I feel like he is the impetus for her to stay connected to the patriarchy and to that level of control. He comes in and says, Oh, this is what your sisters are doing. Oh, this is what your brother is doing. Oh, by the way, and he continually taunts her and it throws roadblocks in her personal development all the time. Like it it causes stagnation at certain moments. And to me, that's like that constant drawing back into that world of men. I almost wonder if Zeus deliberately is having him do that to prevent her development.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Well, it's kind of like when you grow up with a toxic patriarchal example, and then you go out into the world on your own, and then you get into a toxic relationship.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Because they develop this sexual relationship, and it she's very clear that she never feels that he's a safe place. She's at least wise enough to know that. She knows that he is a viper in her bed, but she says, and I'm a viper in his. And again, matching his energy, but yet not still in a place where she can ever really grow or continue to come into her own power.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

And I don't think she's a viper for him until the end.

Men On The Shore And Pigs

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Right. And I that's what I was about to point out too, is that I think for especially a lot of young women, we'll put ourselves into situations where we feel we kind of kid ourselves into thinking, oh, I have power here too. Oh, yeah, I have control over this situation. When in reality, because of our patriarchal society, we were never gonna have any power in that situation. And I do think that she kids herself into thinking that she's safer than she really is, you know, or that she has influence where she doesn't, because Hermes was always going to be the one with more power. He can come and go as he pleases. He's an Olympian, you know, where she is not. So I think that even though he does help the story along and she does have some agency, I think for the most part it's not true agency.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

And then we begin to have these human men show up. And she still has this affinity for humans. And she still has this desire to help and to be worshipped because she still likes that. It was a mistake to turn one into an immortal, but you know, that idea of having someone bow down to her or worship her being able to be that gracious hostess, provide the fish, you know, is still tempting to her and gives her a purpose because she does get lonely at times in the beginning, and especially lonely in a negative way at the beginning. I think loneliness becomes a powerful thing later on, but in the beginning, she's lonely in a negative way, and that is dangerous for her because then she allows too much in that is dangerous for her. And we have these random human men show up on the island, and this is where I think she really realizes she has to create her own safe space.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

And I think the fact that before the men started coming and she ends up having this really traumatic experience with them, the fact that she had had the very short relationship with Daedalus ahead of time too kind of lulled her into that false sense of security with them because she had met an honorable man who was kind in nature and had her best interests at heart and thought, okay, these men must be the same. They're, you know, brave, adventuring warriors. They can bring me news of the lands. And then, of course, we find out that that was not their intention at all.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Right. And I agree with you. I think she meets some, well, she meets a excellent man in Deadless. And so that is a true relationship that she has for a brief period of time, a mutual relationship, and then she just continues to be naive for that period of time. But I think she swings in extremes in this moment because we have the I'm going to help people, and then we have the okay, men are rapist assholes, and we're going to now kill them. Or well, she does kill the first cross.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

Turn them into their true self, which is a pig, and then she slaughters them.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

But she does slaughter the pigs, yes. And there is times where she likes stops the mid-transformation and you know, when they have broken rib cages and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Does little experiments on them. But does little experiments on them.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

And it's important to say that all these transformations into quote unquote their true selves are all Cersei's perspective. Right. It's completely out of her pain and her opinion about persons. They're not actually some sort of inner thing that they're becoming, it's all a reflection of Cersei's inner reality.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Right. She turns them into pigs because they're selfish, greedy men who all seek to take advantage of her. And after she is sexually assaulted the first time, you know, as soon as she sees that they are heading that direction, like, do you have a husband at home? Is there a father in the house? And then suddenly, you know, they start going down that road. She's like, Oh, hmm, Angela, maybe speak my magic word.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Oh, pig. And after years and years of doing that, she even admits later on that sometimes she doesn't even give them the chance to get there. You know, they come in the door, they've had one glass of wine, she decides she's bored with the game that she's been playing and just goes ahead and turns them all into pigs, which I think just kind of shows um how she kind of gets jaded in the whole thing, especially with that loneliness aspect of it all. Like she she kind of does for a brief time become the monster that Odysseus eventually finds, you know, when he walks into her door.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Would you give Odysseus the credit for shifting her perspective back again? Because I don't like Odysseus, so I'm asking someone other than myself.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

I don't know. Because I do think that she was right about his men when she first met them and turned them into pigs. I think that from everything we know about Odysseus from the Odyssey, and I know it's another work of fiction, but from Madeline Miller's other book, Song of Achilles, I don't think that Odysseus would have done much to reprimand his men had they been successful at assaulting her or killing her or both, and stealing from her, he would have seen it as another triumph that he had vanquished another monster. I think by the end of his time with her, maybe even by the end of that night with her, that first night, he saw her as more than just a monster to triumph over or someone to use his wit to outsmart. But I don't think he is a good character, a good person. No by far.

SPEAKER_03 40:06

No, but I think that that you saying that seeing people as more than just monsters is a key element, though, to this book and to this story. And Odysseus can be given credit to a certain extent, giving her the time to see men as more than monsters.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

That's true.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

Even though they do monstrous things.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

And she spends a lot of her time with Odysseus, kind of putting a veil over her own eyes to his monstrousness, if that's a word, you know, the monstrosities that he has committed. Because he's telling her all these stories about his time as a hero, and she's kind of listening to it in awe, like, oh, he's so clever, he's such a good leader, he's so strong. But then later on, when she spends time reminiscing on those stories and telling them to her son, she thinks to herself, These aren't nice stories. Right. This there's a lot of violence in this. Right. Could he not have made a kinder, safer, more PC choice here? Maybe he didn't have to behead the children. So we we kind of see him in two lights, both as the man that she admires and a monster just like everyone else in the story.

Motherhood Athena And True Fear

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Right. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that the the story goes a long way to really complicate our vision of humans. We said at the beginning it allows this woman to be complicated, which women aren't often allowed to be in stories, but it also shows us that really anytime you are trying to boil down a human being into one thing, hero, villain, whatever it may be, it's more complicated than that. It's more nuanced.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

Of course, we have to acknowledge Odysseus leaves and he leaves something behind. And that would be the pregnancy that Circe has at that point, and that is accurate to Greek mythology. Um, Circe bears Odysseus' child. And I love that portion of the book. It is painful to read on one level, but talk about resonating with something. As a mother of five children who's experienced postpartum depression and has at times wondered if I wanted children at all ever, and can I give them back? Or in those first three months, can I put them back inside? Because I'd rather be pregnant again than be sleepless and this upset all the time. So she has a miserable time. She has a miserable pregnancy. This is not a beautiful thing, even though she is an immortal and she is a witch and she has all this ability to do these wonderful things. It is an ugly pregnancy. And then she's a terrible mother, and not because she's an awful mother, but because she just doesn't know what she's doing. And the baby cries all the time. And she just she's like, Do I have to carry him all the time? Like, I can't even do this. I'm carrying him. He'll only be happy if I walk around the island. I mean, it is reminiscent to me of Steve and I driving around parking lots and walking nonstop during the night. And yes.

SPEAKER_03 43:01

I mean, yeah, a mother especially deals with so much. But as a father, I remember uh my youngest Parker was just so you could not put him down. It was nonstop screaming in the car, non-stop screaming. You had to hold him. He would only stop crying if you were holding him. And there were moments where it was 3 a.m.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

and I'm screaming, for the love of God, Parker, will you please speak quiet? I can verify that because he was across the courtyard in the same apartment complex as well.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

I woke up the entire apartment. But and then, of course, I once got pulled over because I rolled through a stop sign at 3 a.m. Because I was out on a drive trying to get Parker to go to sleep.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

And you did he's like starting to lull off and you don't want to stop.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

But I love the development of telegamus and the fact that, you know, of course, it it's almost like she gave birth to a monster and then he turns into this wild child. And it would be so tempting to say, oh, this is a bad seed.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

But he's not. But he's not. He's just a child.

SPEAKER_03 43:55

He's just a child. And and but it is so quick, especially when we're judging other people's children.

SPEAKER_02 43:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

To do that. But he grows up to be a very rate man.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yes, he does. And I think one of the parts of his childhood that was really important for her to realize and even heal her own inner child was the moment where she realizes that part of the reason this is so frustrating to her is because she was never allowed the space to cry. She wasn't allowed to run free and wild and do all the things that she wished she could do because she wasn't safe enough to do them. She knew that the consequences to her actions as a child would have been death or torture, and that her son is acting a fool, you know, being a little terrorist because he knows that he's safe and loved and would never be treated that way. And I think that that was an important moment for her, even though he's still terrorizing her. It's an important moment for her to realize that part of this is because I am a safe place for him to land, and I never had that myself.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Yes, that's incredibly important.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

I've certainly had those moments with my children, though, where I've looked at them and said, Why have I encouraged you to speak? Right? Because you try to let them have that freedom, and then you're like, Oh, what did I do to myself? And I think that the book really does give an honest depiction. You would expect someone with Cersei's powers to be able to overcome anything, but she cannot overcome something as natural as motherhood. And it brings her on that first step closer to humanity. And when we talk about that those transformations, that constant running theme of transformation and her misstep of transforming someone into a god, and then her punishment for transforming someone into a monster, and then these, you know, lashing out rightfully in a lot of situations against these men, we now see her begin a gradual transformation. And motherhood is one of those first really big moments that takes her down that road. And I'm there for it.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

And she can't even trust in her magic with it either, because like in the moment where he's a toddler and he will not stop tearing the house apart, and she decides in anger to make that sleeping draft and be like, I just need you to shut up for five minutes. Let me work my spells. And she makes the draft and gives it to him, and he drops like a stone. And she has that moment of panic, realizing what she's done because she gave him the potion in anger instead of having the intention of helping him settle. Right. And so I think that's an important moment too to realize that the witchcraft, the divinity, isn't everything, especially when it comes to her interactions with the people that she loves. You know, like sometimes that's not the answer.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

And of course, Athena is literally trying to kill her child and and causing almost everything in their environment to try to kill her child. But I do relate to this feeling of everything's trying to kill my child.

Trigon And The Cost Of Love

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Right. The pots are falling off the shelves, the everything else is happening, and and this child is toddling around, and you're running around after the child going, oh dear God, you know, and yeah, everything's going wrong. So since you brought up Athena and how Athena wants to kill Telegamas. Telegamas.

SPEAKER_03 47:13

There's Telemachus and there's Telegamas.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Yes, uh all the names in Greek mythology. I mean, let's get real. Anyway, Athena wants to kill him. And Athena makes me so mad because all the gods that come in in this book are tools of oppression. And Athena, having sprung from Zeus's head, to me, becomes more and more of just a male female figure, like a male extension. She is still a tool of the patriarchy, and she wants to control and she wants to come in and oppress. And she makes me crazy in this particular book. So Cersei has to go all these to all these lengths to protect the island, to keep Athena out. And Athena has been forbidden to directly attack him. So she's trying to do a variety of things to make it happen. And Cersei realizes she's going to need something to truly protect her son, especially since her son wants to leave the island eventually. And so she decides to really, in that hero's journey moment, travel into her innermost cave, which in this case is to the depths of the sea, to face the god of the deep, Trigon, and to try to get this poison that even the gods are afraid of. You really likened that to something else in the book, Lindy. So I'm gonna let you take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

Well, it is just very similar to Prometheus' journey, you know, to give the humans fire and then be okay with accepting the wrath of the other gods and being punished. Because once she gets down there with Trigon and she realizes, oh, this isn't a boss battle to the death to get the spear, you know, this is a moment of self-sacrifice. Um, Trigon is not going to just hand me the weapon, but Trigon is also not gonna let me leave unscathed. And I think in the book, the punishment for um touching the well, it's not a spear, it's curse. It's his tail, right? The to be stung by his tail for gods is eternal pain and for mortals is death. So she's essentially risking eternal pain and suffering, which has been a theme throughout the book, that she has never shied away from pain and suffering like the other gods do. But she's the first and only god that's ever been willing to suffer the eternal pain. And so Trigon ends up seeing that as the ultimate act of sacrifice and love and decides to give it to her anyways. But it really is like a full circle Prometheus moment because she's finally willing to make a sacrifice for someone other than herself, for something bigger than herself, which is the love of her son, who is human. And I also think it's very interesting that Trigon knew that the ultimate punishment for her would be to have to take it for herself and cause him pain and suffering, which I thought was very interesting. Had another hero or another god come to him for the uh tale, he probably would have chosen a different punishment. Uh, but instead, he knows that the act of cutting it from his body and causing him suffering would be enough to scar her, which I think is another way to show her humanity.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

Right. And it is truly a human moment for her. And I think that is the next step. It's also part of the motherhood journey, but it is one of her next big steps toward humanity. And we don't want to go into the ending ending of this book because I think something has to be left. So I think we're gonna start to wrap up here.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

One of the themes that I absolutely loved throughout this book was what her divinity felt like, which I feel like to a god is also a moment of who am I? We can sort ourselves into our Harry Potter houses or into our, you know, zodiac signs and everything. But for her, wondering what her divinity felt like was really one of the biggest questions throughout this book. Right. So I think it's a really beautiful moment at the beginning of the book and then at the end. In the beginning, she says her divinity feels like an empty shell. There's nothing inside. And we can see that in her interaction with the other gods. She doesn't belong. But by the end of the book, she knows who she is, what she stands on, you know, like what matters to her, and in the end, chooses to become her truest self, which we won't spoil for anyone. Um, but I think that that was a really beautiful journey and a good question that we can ask ourselves throughout our own lives. You know, what does my divinity, my ego, my truest self feel like? And how can I embody that every day? And here's how Cersei describes her divinity in the last lines of the book, which I think is very important. It says, Overhead, the constellations dip and wheel, my divinity shines in me like the last rays of sun before they drown in the sea. And that is the very end where she gets to become her truest self, which we will not spoil for the listeners. I think it's a very powerful moment.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

And I think it's a symbolic thing too, because the sun is her father, right? And we've already said the father is the patriarchy. So she's like the dying of the patriarchy in a way, and that's what her divinity feels like.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

Right. That she's taken down that thing that used to oppress her, that she used to wait for. Her father's light coming into the obsidian halls, her father's light rising when she was afraid at night on the island in those opening days, and that her father might come and rescue her or might come to her when something bad happened, and now we are secure within ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

She feels like something that's more powerful without him.

Divinity Rewritten And Next Read

SPEAKER_02 52:40

Right. And I think that is a beautiful image. Okay. Well, it has been so fun to have Lindy on our podcast today, and we just are so glad you were here with us. Well, thank you guys so much for having me and for reading my favorite book. Yes, and we all loved it. So now it may be one of all of our favorites. And maybe we can read another book at some point where Lindy will be on here with us again. So, but right now we need to discuss what we're going to read next time. So I have finally convinced Peter to join the rest of us in the world. Well, probably, you know, not all the rest of us, but I definitely teach all my students this. Join the rest of us and read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

SPEAKER_03 53:16

Yes, Liz was appalled to find out that I had never read Fahrenheit 451, I've never read 1984, and I've never read Animal Farm. I was never assigned them in school. I just went to a crappy school. So I'm happy. I really, it's it's it's beyond time for me to add these classics to my repertoire.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

Right. So we're gonna start with Fahrenheit 451. So that will be our next discussion, and then we'll let you know where we're going after that. So until then, keep reading and keep thinking, and we'll talk to you soon.