Greek Mythology and Dalinar/Taln

[Diomedes]

There has been some discussion on the names of the Unmade referring to ancient hebrew and phoenician myth.

Since this parallel is established, I thought it would be interesting to share some thoughts of mine regarding greek mythology, Dalinar and Taln.

1. Dalinar and Hercules/Herakles 

You may remember Hercules being this fun adventure hero of greek myth. He slays monsters, liberates people. Most known are  the twelve labours at the end of which he goes down to the underworld/ Hades to capture the hellhound Cerberus. He is the guy of Disney`s "Hercules". 

Yet, in the original myth there exists a way darker side of our hero. He is a heavy drinker and a violent man. In fact in almost every myth Hercules murders somebody. Most famously he murdered his own wife Megara and children in a fit of rage.  For some reason the people at Disney thought it cool, to cast the wife he later murdered in myth into the movie. According to some versions this was the entire reason he was tasked with the twelve labours as a punishment for his misdeeds.  

Here Hercules is depicted murdering his wife and children.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Megara_(Wife_of_Hercules)/

This brought me to Dalinar. Like Hercules he has an alcohol abuse problem. He used to be this warlord who enjoyed to sack and destroy cities. Hercules is btw. likewise thought to have been a general and to have destroyed a lot of cities. One prominent example is Troy, which he destroyed with an army one generation before the trojan war. Hercules is of course heavily musculed like Dalinar. Both are  this brute human force of nature who buldozer through everything, friend and foe alike. 

the episode of murdering  his wife makes up the plot of two famous tragedies, one of the Athenian author Euripidies, and of the roman philosopher Seneca. In both versions his jealous stepmother Hera sends down the godess "madness" to earth to indue Hercules with mad rage. In this blindness he committs the crime. Interestingly enough however, Hercules still thinks he is guilty, even though his mind was influenced by the godess. He is so desperate he almost wants to kill himself. I think the parallel to Dalinar killing Evi under influence of the Thrill is pretty clear.    

At the end of his life Hercules is betrayed by Deianara who sends him a poisened shirt. According to some versions she did not know the poisen was fatal and merely wanted to make Hercules love her again. Anyways, the pain is so intense Hercules decided to burn himself on a pyre to end his agony. Through burning himself he ascended into being a god. Again, the parallel to Dalinars ascension to being-who-knows-what in OB is interesting. Obviously not everything in Dalinar`s life can be thrown into this Hercules mould, but I think the parallels are there.   

2. Taln/ Philoctetes

Philoctetes is a greek hero only hardcore nerds of greek mythology, like me know about. So allow me to introduce you to him. As Hercules was sitting  in agony on his funeral pyre, nobody dared to put the wood on fire. The only one who managed to do it, was a certain Philoctetes a native of the area and a gifted archer. Thanking him Hercules gave him his famous bow as a gift.

As the Trojan War came along, Philoctetes participateted as one of the primary heros. He was the best archer in the entire greek army. Yet as the navy was approaching Troy, Philoctetes got bitten by a snake. Because he was in such great pains he screamed all day and disturbed the entire army. Rather than caring for him the leaders of the army decided to abandon him on the nearby island of Lemnos, breaking the oaths they had sworn. On that island he stayed for the entire rest of the war, also during the events of Homers Iliad, which is why his story is not widely known.

In the tenth year however a prophet sent by the gods came to the greeks telling them, they could not conquer Troy until they had retrieved Philoctetes. He carried the bow of Hercules, which had already taken Troy once before and would be needed to do it again. There are multiple tragedies depicting the greek delegation trying to get Philoctetes back to Troy. Needless to say the man was almost driven mad from pain by that point. In Sophocles version he almost  committed suicide at the end of the play.  Nonetheless, he was in the end convinced to return to the greek army. He was healed and In the last months of the war Philoctetes killed Paris, who had started the entire mess.

A paralell could exist to Taln who was likewise abandoned against the Oathpact and was driven mad by pain after thousands of years of torture. Yet he could play a very crucial role in future books, even though he did not in RoW. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Diomedes