Not only does Almond reference William Blake multiple times in his novel Skellig: he also references several significant Greek myths. We will look at each of them so as to provide useful ways of interpreting the novel and its parts. First, there is the tale of Icarus. Icarus and his father, the craftsman Daedalus (whose name means “skillfully wrought”), were imprisoned by King Minos of Crete in a tower over his palace. Daedalus was famous for building Minos’s Labyrinth but had incurred the King’s wrath because he had given help to Queen Pasiphae and Ariadne.
Daedalus desperately wanted to escape and made two pairs of wings out of feathers, affixed to wooden frames with wax. Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sea because the spray would soak the feathers, nor to fly too close to the sun because the wax would melt.
The two men escaped from the Labyrinth, but Icarus was delighted with flying and ignored his father’s warning. He flew too close to the sun; the wax did indeed melt, and he plunged into the sea. His body washed up near Samos and the islet was named Icaria in his honor; the sea around the islet was called the Icarian Sea. Hercules recognized Icarus’s body and brought it back to Daedalus.
The moral of this story is varied: young men are prone to pride and restlessness, and they must heed their elders. There must also be balance and measure in our lives: neither too close to the sun nor too close the sea is wise.
The second Greek myth Almond relates at length is that of Persephone, daughter of Demeter and wife of Hades. Hades fell in love with the beautiful Persephone when he saw her picking flowers in a meadow. He carried her down into the underworld in his chariot.
The disconsolate Demeter roamed the earth for her daughter; failing to find her, she withdrew from the world and lived in her temple in Eleusis. While “Mother Nature” was away, the world suffered, so Zeus sent Hermes to persuade Hades to give up Persephone.
Persephone would have been able to escape if she did not eat anything while she was captured, but Hades gave her a pomegranate seed, knowing she could not resist it. This bound her to him, but Zeus knew that the fate of the world was at stake due to Demeter’s grief; therefore, he allowed Persephone to leave for part of the year and return for the rest. Pantheon.org writes of her: “Being the infernal goddess of death, she is also called a daughter of Zeus and Styx in Arcadia she was worshiped under the name of Despoena and was called a daughter of Poseidon Hippius and Demeter, and said to have been brought up by the Titan Anytus Homer describes her as the wife of Hades, and the formidable, venerable, and majestic queen of the Shades, who exercises her power, and carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead, along with her husband. Hence she is called by later writers Juno Inferna, Averna, and Stygia, and the Erinyes are said to have been daughters of her by Pluto Groves sacred to her are said by Homer to be in the western extremity of the earth, on the frontiers of the lower world, which is itself called the house of Persephone.”
The common meaning of the tale of Persephone is the passage of seasons, and that there is always a movement from life to death. Cycles are inherent to nature, and can thus provide comfort in their regularity and knowability.
