Instead he creates a hybrid of the modern interpretation of the Grim Reaper with the dark cloak and the animal skull on the front of his boat. What O’Connor has clearly done here is move away from the Charon of the ancient world. The vases above show Charon as wearing a tunic that barely covers his body whilst also looking more approachable to the dead person he is ferrying across. But we can see a break from the ancient visual depiction of Charon as when looking at his clothing in O’Connor’s Hades we see a very dark and cloaked old man. This means that O’Connor had many ancient literary and visual depictions of Charon as a base model. Sullivan speaks about this saying that Charon was ‘glorified in Greek art’ often depicted with Hermes guiding the soul of the dead. Looking at these two images we can see that O’Connor’s inspiration for his Charon was not just limited to literary descriptions as there were many vases depicting Charon. This is further evidence of O’Connor taking his model of Charon from Greek literature, much in the same way he modelled Zeus on his representation in the Theogony. O’Connor has clearly gone to great lengths to create an authentic depiction of his characters, even minor ones such as Charon.Ĭharon as the grim reaper: O’Connor’s hybrid ferrymanįigure 1: Charon and Hermes Psychopomp, Athenian red-figure lekythos C5th B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Artįigure 2: Detail from Athenian red-figure white-ground clay vase circa 450-400 BC. Euripides mentions Charon in his Alcestis as Alcestis says ‘the ferryman of the dead, Charon, has his hand on the quant and calls to me now: “Why delay? Hurry! You’re holding me up”. It is important to look at the depiction of Charon in Greek literature as O’Connor himself revealed he used Hesiod’s Theogony as a model for his Zeus. Sullivan sums up Charon’s depiction in Greek literature as ‘the busy, impatient ferryman, anxious to get the shades aboard’. Charon also acts as O’Connor’s ‘tour guide’ as he ferries the soul past all the noticeable criminals in the underworld allowing O’Connor to describe them to his reader. We can say that by including Charon at the start of Hades, O’Connor bases the structure of this graphic novel on the journey a dead person would take as they enter the underworld. However O’Connor has him appear in 8 panels throughout Hades with most of these appearing at the start of the visual novel. He did not have to be included in this visual novel as O’Connor’s focus is primarily on the Olympians. The ferryman Charon is one of the staples of the Underworld in the ancient world. This not only allows him to fit as much information about the underworld as possible in a short period of time, but also allows him to touch on much more existential meanings O’Connor chooses to describe the journey into the underworld as if it were you yourself embarking on the journey. But any piece of work writing about death and the underworld contains deeper meanings. Hades is not an Olympian.’ That being said I had expectations before sitting down to read Hades of a quite morbid and dark visual novel and my expectations were fully met by O’Connor.Īt its core the Hades novel’s primary purpose is to teach its reader about how Hades came to be married to Persephone. I call him a Greek god instead of an Olympian because just as O’Connor says in his author’s note that ‘He cheated.
Finding out that the target audience of the Olympians was young children I was worried that I would not be able to fully enjoy them how wrong I was! After reading Zeus I decided to read Hades as I view Hades as the most underrated Greek god.
#HADES CHARON SERIES#
I’ve always been a fan of comic books and graphic novels and was surprised to find that someone had created a series about the Greek gods. Some of the best blogs are featured on our departmental blog site.
#HADES CHARON TV#
Note: For the module ‘Classics in Popular Culture’ (CLC315), students were asked to write blog posts on Classical Reception in the TV series Plebs or Once Upon a Time, and on the comics Asterix or George O’Connor’s Olympians.
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