The siren and the snake
The siren goes to an island to prevent herself from meeting a man and hurting him, but then she meets a man who is already hurt, and they find they are quite compatible. Perhaps his awareness of pain made him immune to the off-siding effects of sirens who are beautiful first and then horrifying. The man has already been indoctrinated into pain and mistreatment.
The deep love of lonely lovers
Lonely lovers burn bright, but they burn quick. The problem is that when someone is lonely, they aren't lonely for just one person, they're lonely for all the people, and although those feelings are assuaged by romantic company, two isolated people who fall quickly in love tend not to last.
The bitter fates
Fate is the bane of human existence. To be lonely all your life and then to finally get what you've always wanted, just to have it taken away again—it's a lonely process, but it would be wrong to ignore that wisdom. Life very often feels exactly like that.
The hero on a lonely island
Greek mythology is just full of hero's who fall under the spell of female deities. This is what Jung would have described as an anima, and the job of the hero and his young lover is to correctly distinguish between themselves so that they can love selflessly. In the end, this ironic tale always ends the same way—the hero leaves the fairy/mermaid/goddess/fury behind.
The kind mermaid
Sirena's character is ironic. A siren who decides not to kill sailors sounds like a miracle, but in an even more clever and ironic twist, the only reason mermaids do this kind of thing is because they're confused about how to get love. There's something deeply true about this. It is the case that (especially young) lovers often hurt each other because they have not sorted through what sacrificial love really means. The kind mermaid is available to further instruction because of her willingness to change when she feels compelled by her conscience.
