24 pages • 48 minutes read
AnonymousTheseus
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Theseus
Theseus is the son of Aethra and either Aegeus or Poseidon. Aegeus leaves Aethra in Troezen with a pair of sandals and a sword that are trapped under a rock. If Theseus can lift the rock and claim the sandals and sword before he reaches manhood, he is to wear the sandals and bring the sword to Athens so that Aegeus will know him. Theseus accomplishes this task and is told to go to Athens by sea, but he chooses to go by land so that he can make a reputation for himself. Theseus does this because he knows that part of being a hero is accomplishing tasks beyond the limits of human capability. He cannot do this at sea as easily as he will be able to on land.
By traveling across land to Athens, he faces many challenges that he overcomes to prove himself worthy of a position in his father’s court. He overcomes the brutal bandit Periphetes, outwits Sciron, and earns the respect of the Amazons. By accomplishing these three tasks, Theseus proves his physical strength, his mental prowess, and his charismatic and political abilities. He shows himself worthy in all of these areas, earning a reputation that precedes his arrival to the city.
These skills serve Theseus well in his time as king. Under his rule, Athens is united with Attica, a nation that was previously hostile toward it, and fights alongside the Amazons, who still respect him. His prowess leads him to believe he can manage the dangerous journey to the Underworld. He attempts the journey and becomes trapped, but Heracles rescues him. When he escapes the Underworld, however, he finds that Athens has a new ruler. With Theseus gone, Athens needed a ruler to guide it, and his entrapment in the Underworld equated to a death sentence. Few people enter the Underworld and live to tell the tale. Because Theseus failed to return from his quest, he was replaced as king by someone who appeared more capable than he.
Theseus flees Athens and houses with a friend whom he believes he can trust. However, his ability to discern a person’s nature has declined, and he is ultimately betrayed by the friend, who ends Theseus’s life by pushing him off a cliff. After his death, the stories of Theseus and his heroic deeds live on.
The Minotaur
The Minotaur is a creature created by godly intervention. Minos offends the gods by asking for proof of their favor and then denying them the proper respect. In retaliation, Poseidon causes Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, to fall in love with a bull and mate with it, resulting in the half-man, half-bull creature named the Minotaur.
The Minotaur displays the capability for thoughts that are more critically inclined than those of a bull but not so developed as a human’s. In the Labyrinth, “[when] he saw Theseus with the sword in his hand coming to meet him, he paused, for no one had ever faced him in that way before” (206). The Minotaur becomes a representation of the internal divide between human and monster. It displays the ability to think and reason in a limited way, but it is not capable of maintaining those thoughts and gives in to its animalistic instincts.
There is no agreement in myths about which parts of the Minotaur are animal and which parts are human. Some portrayals depict the Minotaur as a creature with a human head and torso. Many more depictions show the Minotaur as a bull-headed creature with the lower body of a human. The discrepancy between these depictions of the Minotaur demonstrates different views about which part of the body makes people human and which part controls instincts. The depictions that make the head and torso of the Minotaur the bull reflect the belief that what makes one human is the ability to rationalize and think with whatever brain one is given. In contrast, the depictions that display the human head and the rest of the creature as a bull demonstrate a belief that no matter how rational a human’s thoughts, they are still at the mercy of their animal instincts.
Ariadne
Ariadne is the daughter of King Minos and a princess of Crete who falls in love with Theseus upon his arrival at Minos’s court. She sets out to rescue him and wants to go with him as his wife when he leaves. Theseus agrees to this and takes her with him when he and the Athenians escape. However, he abandons her on Naxos; some stories claim he does this intentionally, while others claim that the god Dionysus wanted Ariadne for himself and forced Theseus to leave her behind. In both accounts, Theseus leaves Ariadne on the beaches of Naxos, where Dionysus finds her. They fall in love and get married, and Dionysus places her wedding crown among the stars as a constellation forevermore.
Ariadne can be read in two different ways, depending on the storyteller’s focus. One view is that her story demonstrates that goodness awaits a person after difficulty and trials. Being abandoned is a horrible experience, but it leads her to a better life of being married to a god and, in some accounts, gaining immortality to live with him on Olympus forever. Ariadne’s story can also be interpreted as a cautionary tale about the unreliability of humans and the need to put faith in the gods. Theseus disappoints Ariadne by abandoning her on a beach, but Dionysus is there for her in her darkest hours. Humans are not there for Ariadne when she needs them most, but divinity never abandons her.
King Minos
Minos is the king of Crete, the husband of Pasiphae, and the father of many children, including Ariadne and Androgeos. Minos is portrayed as a vengeful and angry king who seeks revenge rather than justice. This is because of the death of his firstborn, favored son, Androgeos, who was to ascend to the throne when Minos died or retired.
His tales are full of corrupt acts. When Scylla falls in love with him, he uses her feelings for him to eliminate a political opponent’s power by having her cut off her father’s hair. Scylla believes that Minos will reward her; instead, he punishes her for betraying her father. His punishment leads to her becoming the monster of The Odyssey who uses her hair to pluck soldiers off their boats.
His greatest pursuit of revenge is against the inventor Daedalus, who created the Labyrinth for him and then betrayed him by helping Ariadne. Minos hunts for Daedalus across the land and sets a trap to lure him out—a puzzle that only a man of Daedalus’s skill could solve. Minos finally finds Daedalus in the court of King Cocalus. The king’s daughters offer to bathe Minos and let him rest from his long journey, but they betray him by making the bath water too hot and scalding him to death. In the end, Minos is the victim of revenge, though his death may also be viewed as justice due to the suffering he caused.
After his death. Minos is placed on the court of the Underworld. In this capacity, he continues his authority role and uses his knowledge of politics and ethics to determine whether a person lived a good life and earned Elysium; earned an eternal torment in the Fields of Punishment; or lived a neutral life and will spend eternity in the Fields of Asphodel.
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