Circe

by Madeline Miller

the name for what I was did not exist.

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

I did not know the color of my blood.

After all those hours at my father’s feet, I had learned to nose out power where it lay. Some of my uncles had less scent than the chairs they sat on,

scent continues to be relevant when describing the power of people and sometimes places throughout the novel

Her cruelty springs fast as weeds and must any moment be cut again.

A thing that looked like a stone, but inside was a seed.

I found that I was not afraid of the pain that would come. It was another terror that gripped me: that the blade would not cut at all. That it would pass through me, like falling into smoke.

this immediately sets Circe aside from the other divinities; she doesn't fear pain, in fact she wishes for it as proof she is alive/exists/matters

“You think I’d let Apollo have him? He does not deserve such a flower. I blew a discus into the boy’s head, that showed the Olympian prig.”

hyacinthus :(

He smelled like honey and just-kindled flames.

“Nothing is empty void, while air is what fills all else. It is breath and life and spirit, the words we speak.”

Circe is often aware of the air between people and what it holds; can be traced back to this moment?

Next time you’re going to defy the gods, do it for a better reason.

I looked down at his thick, black hair, shining in the sunset light, his strong shoulders bowing low. This is what all those gods in our halls longed for, such worship. I thought perhaps he had not done it right, or more likely, I had not. All I wanted was to see his face again.

another defining trait that separates circe from other gods

lunch. It was still one of my favorite things to watch, that simple, mortal miracle of flint and tinder.

he had grown so covered in blood that he’d looked like a statue dipped in gold.

What was I truly? In the end, I could not bear to know.

“I do not think anyone can say what is in someone else.”

I stepped into those woods and my life began.

Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

the simple joy of learning basic skills

You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.

All the sounds were the air among the leaves and my own breath.

My garden climbed the walls of my house, breathed its scent through my windows.

The breeze blew, carrying the scent of linden flowers. At its back, the muddy stink of the pigs.

How could such variation endure, such endless iteration of minds and faces? Did the earth not go mad?

on humanity

The smells wafted around me, familiar as my own skin: earth and clinging roots, salt and iron blood.

I would come to know this type of man, jealous of his little power, to whom I was only a woman.

I wanted the sun to burn me. I wanted it to scorch me down to bone.

But there was no wound she could give me that I had not already given myself.

The tip bit into my sister’s skin, and blood welled, red and gold mixed.

“The gods love their monsters.”

My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch.

This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun.

also how circe finds fame/power

I looked into his good face. Not good because it was handsome, but because it was itself, like fine metal, tempered and beaten for strength.

circe finds mortals good because their bodies show the wear of their lives and work

She was leaning forward, her golden hair loose, embroidering the sheets around her.

They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power. It is not enough to be an uncle’s favorite, to please some god in his bed. It is not enough even to be beautiful, for when you go to them, and kneel and say, ‘I have been good, will you help me?’ they wrinkle their brows. Oh, sweetheart, it cannot be done. Oh, darling, you must learn to live with it. And have you asked Helios? You know I do nothing without his word.”

“They take what they want, and in return they give you only...

Prometheus’ words, deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. “We bear it as best we can,” I said.

But I pressed his face into my mind, as seals are pressed in wax, so I could carry it with me.

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

There was no answer, of course. Only the air, eating my words.

bore a figurehead so massive it must have altered the draught of the ship.

I caught a strange, faint odor on the wind.

The air grew clean,

A pathetic exile, who stinks of her loneliness?”

A pleasure rose in me so old and sharp it felt like pain.

the memories were built of air, and blew away.

A familiar smell wafted from her skin. Rose oil and my grandfather’s river.

Here was something torn that I could mend.

As it turned out, I did kill pigs that night after all.

I have been found. Let them see what I am. Let them learn the world is not as they think.

The truth is, men make terrible pigs.