In the Pre-Iliadic stories, prior to the Agamemnon, Tantalus cooked his son and served him to the gods because he was testing them. The gods punished him for it because it was wrong in so many ways. The symbolism behind Tantalus doing this relates to selfish people. I’m not saying that everyone would do this but, a lot of people will put other people in bad situations just to help themselves. Humans are very selfish. We think our lives are more important than anyone else’s. We tend to be the most important person in our lives because we can’t feel other people’s pain and emotions at the time. If we can’t feel other people’s pain, we don’t care. It’s not our problem it’s their’s (as some people think). The Bible says put others before yourself, and we don’t tend to do that. Although we don’t go as far as Tantalus did, we will go to some extreme to make ourselves happy or accomplish our own goals.
I read something recently and this symbolism reminded me of it. It said, “I wish we hated our sin as much as we hate everyone else’s”. Since our mind is in our own bodies, we know the reason behind why we do the things we do, and so it’s ok, but we just think that when other people do the same thing, they’re doing it just because it’s sin and they don’t care. So, the moral of this symbolism is that some people should relate to Tantalus because he sacrificed what should have been a very important and special person in his life just to try to accomplish his own goals. So, lesson number one in this essay is to never cook anyone, believe me, it’s just wrong:) and don’t be selfish to a point where anyone gets hurt, or their life, and yours, becomes less meaningful.
The second point of the symbolism is Tantalus’s punishment. He went to Greek hell. His punishment was that he had water at his feet, but when he reached for it, it would disappear, and fruit hanging from a tree above him within reach, but right when he reached for it, it suddenly wasn’t within reach anymore. They were torturing him with things he could see and reach but were not within reach. This reminds me of life goals, we can imagine them, and have it all planned out, and they’re within reach until they are not. The world tortures us with all of these amazing accomplishments and dreams we see other people have, and they make us think we can reach whatever goal we want, but it’s harder than what we see in our minds. We can accomplish goals and dreams, but they are not within reach like we want them to be, and we have to be tortured and struggle before we are even close. We have to work for what we get; it doesn’t just get handed to us.
I think specifically the water and the fruit symbolize the essential thing that we need to live, but we still have to work for. We need to accomplish things to feel needed, we want people to want and need us, so we feel like the essential food and water that people want to reach for. I know this is a weird connection, but it’s very true for humans. I kind of thought of the people who (as they say) play hard to get, or the people who do things just to make other people feel bad for them, or put themselves in a situation where they harm themselves just to feel like someone else cares. People who play hard to get, they know the person pursuing them will never be able to achieve them. They torture them just like the gods tortured Tantalus, putting something in front of him knowing he won’t ever get what he wants, because if he gets what he wants, he won’t want it anymore, He’ll be satisfied with it, and that was his punishment. People that play hard to get, never want people to achieve them. In order for them to feel wanted, they want someone to not take them for granted. If you finally achieve them, you won’t want them anymore because you have them, and you’ll be content. As for the people who will do anything for attention, they will go as far as hurting their bodies just to feel wanted. That shows you that attention is important for every human. Studies show that about 17% of people below twenty years of age these days harm themselves for attention, or just so they can feel something, because they feel that the people around them don’t care about them. So, the connection I am trying to make between humans now and Tantalus then is in all our goals we want, whether it be people or things. Getting what we want sometimes is harder than just reaching for it and it being right there. Although Tantalus’s situation is much different than ours, he reached for what he couldn’t achieve. If it wasn’t a punishment from the gods and they just put him there to make him work hard for what he was reaching for, it would be an even more relatable story.
Works Cited
Salamon, Maureen. Cutting and self-harm. Maureen Salamon, 2024, http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cutting-and-self-harm-why-it-happens-and-what-to-do-202305312940#:~:text=About%2017%25%20of%20teenagers%20engage%20in%20self-harm%20at,least%20once%2C%20according%2.
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