What the myths do is they take essential elements of human experience – victory, defeat, shame, betrayal, war, peace – and create a gripping narrative that makes you understand in a very visceral way. They’re great delivery vehicles for some of the most important emotions and events that we experience in life. That’s why they’re so open for adaptation and reinterpretation. You can play with the particulars: the settings, the names, the decor, the time frame. But the bones are very striking, and hard, and they have endured. I think that’s why we keep coming back to them.
Greek mythology is still relevant after all these millennia because it deals with the building blocks of the human experience. Every story is “true”, in the sense that it says something authentic and enduring about our nature. You can be fascinated and disturbed by the world The Hunger Games presents, whether or not you realise it is a version of Theseus’s tale. The mythology well is old and deep, but the water that we draw from it tastes as cool and fresh as if it were newly created.
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