Before Marvel’sEternals, Read Madeline Miller’sCirce

In much of ourmodern supernatural genremedia where Cuban sandwich and baddie wage state of war for world , you could manifestly see the long - lasting influence of myths about gods and ogre incessantly contend for dominance over one another . DC ’s Lucifer , Marvel ’s Loki and Thor , and Sersi of theEternalsare just a handful of the fictitious comic characters craft from the mythology of religious figures . For any MCU rooter looking to brush up , we extremely recommend jibe out Madeline Miller ’s Circe .

As was the case with Loki and Thor , the mythological Circe ’s name is potential to become somewhat more well - roll in the hay follow Marvel ’s coming Eternals film . Gemma Chanis set to play Sersi , an Eternal whose canonical story is found on the Circean myths . Miller ’s Circe follow the many arcs of the eponymousGreek goddess ’ life as she proceed from being an obedient , modest sea nymph to becoming one of the human race ’s first and most formidable sorceresses . Though Circe ’s been most famously assort with the office she play in Homer ’s Odyssey , Miller ’s volume first inclose you to the goddess at a much earlier level in her life sentence — long before she ’d ever encountered humans . Like all of the Titan Helios ’ children , Circe is born with a certain degree of congenital divinity that makes her markedly more graceful and long - live than any mortal . However , compared to her baby Pasiphaë , her brother Perse , and the ease of the Titans in Helios ’ court , Circe ’s consider unremarkable due to her lack of seeming powers or beauty .

In most story , the character is draw as aprototypical witchwith a special knack for shift . But before Circe become around to showing you how she eventually ends up transubstantiate Odysseus ’ men into pigs , the rule book lays out how her propensity for think and require dangerous question were the first stair toward coming into her greatness . Circe inside information how , in the familial king structure established after the Titans and Olympians ’ first war , houri like Circe and her siblings ranked so abject that their world were of lilliputian fear to the other gods . But as inconsequential as nymphs might be on their own , they all own the sort of stunner and love for godhood that often leads to them shacking up with greater theology . All of them , of course , except Circe , whose peers never miss an opportunity to narrate her how repugnant they cogitate she is . The cruelties she suffers from her sib , her female parent Perse , and her unnumerable extended family phallus do bother immature Circe as she spends her perpetual life absorbing information and await for something to shift about her situation . It is n’t until Circe ’s youngest brother , Aeëtes , is born that she first set out to find the strength to become her own broker of alteration .

Circe’s cover art.

Circe’s cover art.Image: Little, Brown and Company

Miller ’s ledger very cannily acknowledges how , in most poetical notification , the precise mechanics ofhow gods ’ powers workare left to the imaginativeness and that many believe the gods can do anything . Unlike the godlike top executive of the Titans and Olympians , the program line over pharmaka — specific plant imbued with power — that Circe discover she has is a skill that requires both a natural gift and a taste for specificity . She first begin dabbling in magic trick by gathering and experimenting with some of therare flowersthat only grow where the blood of Titans has soaked the earth . As Circe begins to go down in love with a deadly man named Glaucus , her desire to make him happy lead to the first major show of might : she uses the wizardly flowers to transubstantiate him into a full - on god who the other Titans at once accept . The nature of Circe ’s relationship with Glaucus is one of the first of many significant deviations Circe fix from the tumid fabulous canon in which she ’s been featured over the century . Where most stories about Circe frame her as a manipulative seductress who bends men to her will , Circe choose for a telling where her interactions with man like Glaucus , Odysseus , and Daedalus are more nuanced and reflective of everyone ’s complexities .

Through its retelling of Circe ’s descent and how her life intersects with those classical Hellenic heroes , Miller ’s Circe turn her into a much more likeable name than her traditional counterparts . But in its deconstruction and reframing of her character , it also stress elements of her story that have come to define the way that we think aboutwitches in pop culture . Even though it ’s meant to be a penalization , Circe ’s eternal , lone exile to the island of Aiaia gives her one of her first dependable tastes of exemption out from the world and its cruelties . Circe make you understand how , from the linear perspective of a witch like Circe , a slow forest packed with obscure and dangerous flora and fauna is a place of safety and strength that unsuspecting mortal would do well to avoid .

Miller ’s characterization spotlight the thematic parallels between the greek goddesses ’ activity in Greco-Roman myths and the sorceresses seen in contemporaneous level likeMarvel’sWandaVision . Circe ’s antagonistic human relationship with her sister Pasiphae endure throughout most of the book , and it plays an crucial use in ready Circe for her lifespan as a far-famed — if ill-famed — magic - drug user whose actions terrify the Supreme Being . As easy as remold matter to her will comes to Circe , she struggles with the “ normal ” thing expected of her as a girl of Helios because she does n’t fit into a traditional mold . Nothing about the romanticism Circe experience , her battles , or her route to motherhood mesh with her feller goddesses ’ ideas about what kind of living she should be leave .

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No one story can capture Circe as a figure in her entirety , as she ’s gone on to body forth many different kinds of ideas , and becomes a much more dynamic and vibrant character the more you delve into her lore . But in this specific moment where reality - warping witches and immortal sorceress have become the hero of the narrative , Circe ’s a design worth considering , and Miller ’s Circe ’s an excellent position to start .

Update 2024-12-05 , 8:45 p.m. ET : An former version of this post misstate that Angelina Jolie is play Sersi in Marvel ’s Eternals , when the character is in reality portrayed by Gemma Chan . The post has been updated to right this error .

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