“‘There you go again, always the hero.
Won’t you yield even to the immortals? She’s not mortal, she’s an immortal evil,
Dread, dire, ferocious, unfightable.
There is no defense. It’s flight, not fight.
If you pause so much as to put on a helmet
She’ll attack again with just as many heads
And kill just as many men as before.’”
The above passage can be found in Book 12, Lines 120-127, of The Odyssey, or on page 469 in the Norton Anthology 3rd Edition. It is dialogue. In this passage, Circe is talking to Odysseus. She warns Odysseus about dangers he will face on his journey. Charybdis, who “sucks down the black water,” is one such danger. She poses a potentially fatal obstacle on Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca. Charybdis is a sea monster and somewhat resembles a whirlpool—though a very powerful and dangerous one. If Odysseus fails to navigate the water correctly and by the manner in which Circe instructs, his ship could drift too close to Charybdis and be sucked down into the sea.
The binary addressed in this passage comes from the contrasting yet intermingled concepts of mortality and immortality, or man and god, which thread throughout The Odyssey. Many times in the epic, the narrator refers to Odysseus as “godlike Odysseus,” which sparks the idea that Odysseus toes the line between god and man. He is not a god per se, but he exhibits godlike qualities and abilities which distinguish him from other human beings who are less renowned than he. His cunning, physical strength, and endurance all make Odysseus mightier and somehow better than his fellow men. Gods like Athena and Zeus tend to have a soft spot for Odysseus, partially due to the drastic circumstances which he faces and his continued rise to meet them. This passage makes the binary much more complicated, because it challenges the idea that anyone (but specifically Odysseus) could somehow be a godlike man. The passage addresses a potential hard truth: that, at the end of the day—or at the end of the epic—Odysseus may just be a man, just like everyone else, and nothing special or superior.
In the passage, Circe chastises Odysseus for what she may view as his conflated ego, though readers are meant to see it as Odysseus’ godlike character. Here Odysseus is met with a difficult situation (he must avoid Charybdis) and must himself participate in this question posed by the binary between man and god. It is a crossroads of sorts, as Odysseus is forced to come face-to-face with the reality of his existence: Is he just a man, after all? Can he possibly be godlike?
It is interesting to focus on whom Odysseus is talking with in this passage: Circe, who is herself a goddess. Odysseus lived for a long time on Circe’s island Ogygia. This itself is not typical for a mortal, though spending time and having excessive close contact with gods seems to be regular for Odysseus during his journey. It is understood that the gods involve themselves in many areas of human life, but they themselves admit to taking a particular liking to Odysseus and being more concerned about him than other mortals. His intimate ties with the gods, seen in action here during this conversation with Circe, still suggest that Odysseus is godlike regardless of the weaknesses about which Circe confronts him. In addition, Circe specifically says, “Won’t you yield even to the immortals?” Though her tone seems frustrated by what she views as Odysseus’ stubbornness, it can also be said that this is just another example of Odysseus’ godlike ability to persevere in the face of danger without showing fear.
The complication of this binary seems intentional. It is ever-fluctuating throughout the epic; one minute Odysseus is crying and entirely human, and the next he is devising a brilliant plan to aid him on his journey home that only a god could think up. It seems as if Homer plays with the idea of “godlike” Odysseus to keep readers engaged, only to be resolved at the very end of the epic, or maybe not at all in the text.
Hi,
I though that the passage you used to talk about the binary structure between mortal and immortal was very interesting. While reading this part, I hadn’t even thought that Circe was basically chastising Odysseus on his “godlike” attitude. It’s also interesting to see that she is basically reminding him that he is a mortal, and one that can easily die. She does this by reminding him that Charybdis is immortal. This, in turn, is a way of reminding him that he’s a mortal man, no matter how many compliments and help he gets.
Here, he wants to avoid not only Charybdis (the water-sucking whirlpool) but also Scylla (a monster living in a cliff, who WILL–Circe claims–eat six of his mean, with her six mouths). He has to choose a path, and, Circe firmly holds, the only path to choose is the one that goes by Scylla. Odysseus hopes to avoid *any* of his men’s deaths, which inspires this moment of chastising. As you rightly note, there’s a lot at stake in this moment–it’s not only about Scylla’s nature (“an immortal evil”) but also Odysseus’ own nature (mortal, but trying, here, to control or outwit fate)