Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles by Jeanette Winterson
by Robin Lyon

Jeanette Winterson’s latest book, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles, is one of the first three books in the Myths series being published by Canongate—a series featuring contemporary writers retelling myths in a new way. The series also features Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad, and upcoming works from AS Byatt, Chinua Achebe, and others. Weight examines boundaries, desire, the weight and burden of responsibility, and the importance of creation and storytelling. Winterson does this through the retelling of the myth of Atlas, but the book is as much about the story of Atlas as it is about the story’s retelling itself.

Winterson’s introduction to the book is surprisingly personal and in-depth, discussing her choice of myth, the value in retelling a story, and what she hoped to accomplish in this retelling. Winterson writes, “Choice of subject, like choice of lover, is an intimate decision… The story of Atlas holding up the world was in my mind before the telephone call had ended… I wanted to explore loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom too, because my version has a very particular end not found elsewhere.”

Weight takes a new look at the myth of Atlas, the titan who, as punishment for his rebellion against the gods, is given the task of carrying the world on his shoulders. Winterson’s portrayal of Atlas is much like her approach to the entire story—he is at once an enormous, mythical figure and entirely human, existing in a true, physical reality. Though born from Earth and Poseidon and destined to revolt against the gods, Atlas is also shown simply as a man with children he cares for, a man with a talent for reaping what the earth and the ocean have to offer, who takes immense pride in his garden. It is when Atlas receives his punishment before the gods that we see him step back into his titanic status.

With Atlas’ punishment, as the Earth is lowered onto his shoulders, he takes on the physical burden and weight of the world, as well as everything contained within it; he also finds himself alone, and bound to remain isolated in the cosmos. Atlas says of his punishment, “I took the burden of the whole world, the heavens above it, and the depths below. All that there is, is mine, but none of it in my control. This is my monstrous burden.” Eventually, Atlas begins to hear what’s happening on Earth, hearing human prayers and struggles, and the Earth itself begins to blend together with Atlas the man. “As the dinosaurs crawl through my hair and volcanic eruptions pock my face, I find I am become a part of what I must bear”

Beyond the tale of Atlas and his punishment, Winterson chooses to focus on the moment when the twelve labors of Hercules bring this better-known hero to Atlas. Set to perform his eleventh task—retrieving three golden apples from Hera’s tree that grows in Atlas’s garden—Hercules heads into the cosmos to ask for Atlas’s help. Hercules agrees to hold up the Earth while Atlas descends to earth to retrieve the apples. Atlas enjoys a brief taste of freedom and a short release from his weighty burden, while Hercules finds himself suddenly overwhelmed, weighed down, and left alone, with nothing but the cosmos and his own thoughts for company. Throughout this switch of burdens, and through conversation, company, and moments of philosophizing, Atlas and Hercules begin to form a bond.

Hercules is loud, unreflective, and constantly active; Atlas quiet, reflective, and unable to act, spending his time still and listening. We learn very quickly that they are the only two strong enough to hold up the Earth. They are incredibly different, yet strangely interconnected, and in this task, they become entirely dependent on each other. The switch involves an intense amount of trust, and both men fear being tricked and at the same time, each is tempted to take advantage of the other.

Winterson portrays Hercules as both a mindless, forceful brute and a questioning, confused man with burdens of his own. While left alone, Hercules begins to panic as thoughts begin to buzz around his head and he’s unable to swat them away. He begins to question his obedience to the gods’ orders, and to ponder his mortality.

Despite the temptation not to return, Atlas comes back and (after falling for a trick by Hercules) accepts the Earth back onto his shoulders. It’s at this point that Hercules sees something in Atlas that he knows he doesn’t have, and recognizes its value. “He did it with such grace and ease, with such gentleness, love almost, that Heracles was ashamed for a moment.”

Hercules leaves this experience with Atlas changed. He begins to accept the presence of the thoughts and questions in his head. He never visits Atlas again (“some combination of shame and fear kept him away”), and after freeing Atlas’s brother Prometheus from his prison and punishment, knows that he won’t save Atlas, because he knows he isn’t willing to take the burden on himself. Eventually, we see Hercules’s death at the hands of his jealous wife and a dead enemy (a story I would love to see Winterson rewrite as more than a brief episode), and he seems almost entirely transformed.

The strengths of this book lie in what makes Winterson’s writing so beautiful, powerful and intimately epic. Disappointingly, so do many of its weaknesses. Winterson’s books tend to focus on a specific relationship (usually a romantic or sexual one), and are filled with the mythical, metaphorical, imaginative, and magical. Somehow in this book that has the mythical, metaphorical, imaginative, and magical as its subject, the intimate, emotional power of her writing is weaker. The focus lies too much on the grandiosity of the myth and the story, and the internal complexity and subtlety of the characters and their situation are often too far in the background.

That said, Winterson’s take on these mythical and larger-than-life characters is skillful and enjoyable, and she has always been a master at taking a tale, a time, or a setting that’s been told innumerably while making the story entirely her own. She brings this tale to a very particular end not found elsewhere, and it’s one that is quiet, emotional and thought provoking, and that brings the concept of story, myth and retelling full circle.

Winterson brings the Atlas story into the present, returning us to the first person voice we first met in the author’s introduction. We see Atlas carrying the Earth into a present where “the old gods had vanished” and “the world had changed through a pale saviour on a dark cross.” Both our author and Atlas have carried innumerable burdens, and the focus turns to the power of creation and storytelling, the control and the choice that we retain despite our burdens. Boundaries and desire are two words that are constantly repeated for Atlas. “It was these he would have to break open and crumble into good soil. It was these he would have to water and watch and sleep beside for the first sign of life.” Our author returns to her choice:

“I chose this story above all others because it’s a story I’m struggling to end.”

“That’s why I write fiction—so that I can keep telling the story. I return to problems I can’t solve, not because I’m an idiot, but because the real problems can’t be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see.

Always a new beginning, a different end.”

February 27, 2006