Some Thoughts on Locke Lamora and Greek Tragedy

DISCLAIMER: I am not a Proper Classicist. I don’t have any sort of Classics degree, and a lot of this is in fact based on my somewhat hazy memories of texts I studied in translation at school, supplemented by that most dubious of sources, Wikipedia. If anything I say is wrong, please correct me! Likewise, it’s been nearly a year since I read the Gentleman Bastards books for the first time, and I don’t have ebook copies that I can easily search inside for the exact quotes I need as textual evidence. If I’ve misremembered or misrepresented anything, please do pick me up on it!

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My flatmate recently read the Gentleman Bastards series, and when she finished The Republic of Thieves [TRoT] we got chatting about Archedama Patience. Specifically, we debated the likelihood of the incredibly far-fetched Lamor Acanthus story being true versus the likelihood of it NOT being true, and Patience going to all that tremendous effort (including bringing Locke back from the very brink of death at great physical expense) just in order to troll him. 

On the one hand, the story seems so unlikely. From a Watsonian perspective, the idea that a Bondsmage could break all the known boundaries of magic and succeed in taking over another body but not stop to first discover whether that particular body is actually capable of magic…seems decidedly odd. Rather sloppy for a Bondsmage. Similarly fishy is the notion that he could accomplish such a feat without drawing attention to himself. Then there are the few little slips and contradictions in the story even as Patience is telling it – she refers to Locke (or his body) as Lamor Acanthus’ ‘first victim’…after she has already explained that he previously experimented on the inhabitants of Catchfire. Perhaps she is just being careless here, but there are holes in the story even as she is weaving it. The whole ‘Seamstress’ thing, for example? None of the other Bondsmagi, as far as I can remember, ever call her that. She tells Locke that ‘Seamstress’ was her original grey name, and she confuses him with the form of her supposed sigil, but she could easily have made all that up AFTER interrogating Sabetha and finding out that Locke's one abiding childhood memory is of needles and thread…it is not the proof she claims it is.

Moreover, on a Doylist level, Locke being effectively the reincarnation of a dead Bondsmage seems like something from a rather different genre of fantasy. Oh, there are most certainly secrets to Locke’s past and his parentage which I’ve no doubt will be gradually unveiled as the series goes on, but something about the Lamor Acanthus story seems to sit very uneasily amidst the other fantasy elements in the story. I’m not nearly genre-savvy enough to articulate exactly why that is, but it might be to do with the way the gods are treated. The presence of the gods in Lynch's writing is felt continually, but it is never made clear whether they are ‘really’ there, or not. Whether Locke’s muttered prayers to the Nameless Thirteenth really do have a cosmic effect, or whether they are just words said to the darkness. And I love that. I don’t want to know. The important thing, for me, is the faith and the religion, and the role these play in the characters’ lives – I don’t care about the existence or otherwise of the gods themselves. (This is one area where I know Lynch has deliberately looked to Greek mythology – and then gone 'nah' and looked away again. The Therin pantheon was, I believe, originally intended to resemble the Olympian model much more closely, but Lynch wisely changed his mind. This, at least, tells me that he has consciously considered certain elements of Classical mythology, and so perhaps not all of the following essay will be complete bollocks.) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes – the lack of evidence for the literal existence of the gods in this text makes it a lot harder for me to accept the literal existence of a ‘soul’ or some other metaphysical manifestation of selfhood, that could transfer from the body of Lamor Acanthus to the body of a child. Perhaps nobody else will agree with me here – or perhaps, as the story and the world continue to evolve over the next four books, it will all start to sit together more peacefully. We are, after all, less than half way through the series as of the end of TRoT, and it’s not as if Scott Lynch’s writing is easily pigeonholed. It’s one of the reasons it’s so enjoyable.

For the record, I think there may be an element of truth in the Lamor story, but there's no way we've got the whole truth and nothing but the truth from Patience. So assuming, for a moment, that these issues all point to the Lamor Acanthus story being – at least partially – fabricated by Patience to fuck with Locke, we’re still left with the question of why she would go to so much effort just to do that. The answer ‘revenge’ only goes so far.

Or does it?

I think that in Locke's world, in order for revenge to really be, well, Revenge, it needs three things: it needs to be personal, it needs to suit the crime, and the victim needs to be aware that it's an act of revenge. So, Patience couldn’t allow Locke to die from Requin's poison, because even such a horribly slow and painful death would not be as satisfying for her as saving his life in order to toy with him indefinitely. This would also fit the crime better - Locke didn't kill the Falconer, but he did strip him of his dignity and freedom, separated him from all his old supporters and left him unable to be a part of his society. Locke changed the Falconer’s way of life forever. Patience spinning this story about Locke being the reincarnation of a nefarious Bondsmage with a redheaded wife does a very similar thing - Locke, being the inveterate worrier that he is, can't ever be free of this gnawing fear, unless it’s conclusively disproven (and with the Bondsmagi leaving Karthain, it’s going to be very hard for him to do that). He can't help but look at himself in a different way, if there’s even the shadow of a possibility that it could be true. This story cuts him off from Sabetha, sets him apart from Jean, and even casts doubt on the one part of his origin story that he was always so certain of - "I'm from Camorr!" It's a story Patience can spin out for as long as she likes, knowing Locke will always listen, in spite of his better judgement, and she thereby effectively has him under her control for as long as she wants. Or, you know, she would have done if she hadn't suffered The Death Of A Thousand Pecks been killed by the Falconer.

This sort of thing is all very Greek Tragedy. It makes me think of Aeschylus’ three part Oresteia. In the Oresteia, King Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia on the way to Troy because it's the only way to appease the goddess Artemis who is holding their ships hostage. SO his wife Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, after waiting for more than ten years, kill Agamemnon when he returns home, to avenge Iphigenia. SO Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra’s son Orestes - again, after a long and dedicated wait - kills Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. SO the Furies pursue and torment Orestes until the gods swoop in and pass judgement and stop the cycle of bloody revenge. And that's the highly simplified version - in fact the story doesn't even really begin with the sacrifice of Iphigenia, it begins long before that. The reasons given for the sacrifice differ depending on which source you read, and in Aeschylus’ version it's all particularly timey-wimey - it could be that Artemis is angry about something that hasn't even happened yet. It can be argued that the cycle of revenge begins with Helen running away with Paris to Troy, or that it begins with Eris the goddess of discord and her apple, or with Zeus not inviting Eris to Peleus and Thetis' wedding…besides which, Aegisthus has his own long and tragic family history, and has his own reasons to want revenge on Agamemnon even without the fact that he wants to get rid of his lover Clytaemnestra's husband. Furthermore, the House of Atreus - Agamemnon's family - is cursed because of the horrifying misdeeds of various of Agamemnon's ancestors, so perhaps the cycle could also have begun there. It's a cycle of revenge that's all to do with family and blood ties and overwhelming hubris. (More on hubris later.)

This is all rather like what's going on in Locke's world, isn't it? Capa Barsavi returns to Camorr, fights his way to power and creates the Secret Peace - and for all we know, he has his own motivations and a Tragic Backstory (tm) which compels him to do this, we have no idea - and in the process, he kills most of Luciano Anatolius' family out of 'necessity'. Anatolius and his surviving sisters dedicate the rest of their lives to the pursuit of revenge, and eventually get it by murdering Barsavi and his family right back. BUT this also involves the incidental murder Calo, Galdo and Bug, thereby dragging Locke and Jean into the cycle, so they need to get their revenge on Anatolius, which also involves getting revenge on the Falconer as the instrument if not the instigator of their brothers’ murder, and this in turn drags Patience and the other Bondsmagi into the cycle….Patience (as much as she is also responsible for what happened to the Falconer) needs to avenge the damge done to her son and the slight to her people by wreaking her revenge on Locke and Jean, and THEN the Falconer eventually recovers himself and immediately sets out to get revenge on Patience. And I'm pretty sure he's not done with his revenge yet. He's not going to stop there – he’s going to wait and rest and build his strength, and then he's going to go after Locke and Jean and the rest of the Bondsmagi. The cycle continues. As in Aeschylus.

The parallels are not exact. The matricide issue kind of makes the Falconer the equivalent of Orestes (though he’s avenging a wrong done to himself, rather than to his family) and I whilst I hope he IS pursued by the Therin equivalent of the Furies for all eternity, I rather think that the mental anguish is all going to be Locke's instead. But the themes are the same. Family loyalty. But also family members killing family members. An escalating cycle of patient waiting and planning followed by bloody revenge. Personal revenge taking precedence over legal justice. Hubris. Scott Lynch has said, in some interview I that I can no longer find, that the sin that leads to almost every death and near-death in The Lies Of Locke Lamora [TLoLL] is hubris, and thinking about it it's absolutely true. Only Nazca is really innocent of that. Everyone else thinks they can beat the system, thinks they are above retribution or are one step ahead of their foes.  Richer and cleverer than everybody else. They’re all wrong.

‘Hubris’ is an interesting word – it is comes from the same root as the word ‘hybrid’, and it originally meant an outrage against the gods. In other words, Human acting as Deity, human beings assuming the rights/powers/privileges of their divine overlords. People becoming hybrids of God and Mortal. If there is any truth to the Lamor Acanthus story, then Locke is a hybrid in a very literal sense: a hybrid of two people.  Even if it’s not true – or that part isn’t – Locke and his crooked family have always lead a duel life as staunch allies of Barsavi and determined breachers of the Secret Peace. Chains trained them up to be equally comfortable amongst the aristocracy and amidst the Camorri underworld. They were common thieves who slept next to a literal pile of gold. Perhaps Locke-the-hyrbid cannot help his hubris. But it is definitely one of his Tragic Flaws.

I will be very interested to see how it all plays out. How will Locke’s cycle of revenge and hubris end? And…where did it start?

The Oresteia is not the only Greek Tragedy parallel. There are many more superficial ones, little cosmetic touches which put in me in a Greek Tragedy frame of mind. For example, there’s Euripides’s Medea, from which Scott Lynch has poached a very tiny but very memorable plot point - the poisoned clothing that burns away the skin. In Red Seas Under Red Skies [RSuRS] Selendri suffers the same punishment that spurned wife Medea doles out to her husband’s mistress Glauce, in the form of a poisoned dress and crown. And Requin, just like Glauce’s father Creon, inadvertently shares her fate as he rushes to her aid. Glauce and Creon die burning, of course, whilst Requin and Selendri live disfigured, but it's the same concept.

There’s also a touch of the Greek Epic going on, particularly in RSuRS. The long tale, unfolding over years of the characters’ lives, peppered with flashbacks and side-quests – it makes me think of the Odyssey. (Though perhaps the Iliad will be the one to come to mind after reading The Thorn Of Emberlain, in which apparently Locke and Jean are going to war…) Lynch’s lavish descriptions of food, each dish described in loving detail, could be straight out of the Odyssey. And elements of Locke and Jean’s dicey maritime exploits put me in mind of Odysseus’ adventures – the mysterious voice in the fog en route to Port Prodigal, for example, reminds me of a particular sinister version of the Sirens, heard by Odysseus strapped to the mast. There must be lots of other small similarities, and if anyone can think of any do let me know. 

Locke and Odysseus certainly have a lot in common: both are accomplished liars, masters of disguise and escape artists, both undertake long sea voyages and lose all their friends to tragedy (I’m so very scared for Jean). Both men are rather more emotional than your ‘typical’ hero. Both are (apparently) favoured by the gods. Whilst Odysseus is definitely rather more handy with a blade (and a bow) than Locke is, he is best known for his wits and trickery – he is ‘polytropos Odysseus’. ‘Polytropos’ means ‘resourceful’, ‘wily’, ‘cunning’, as well as ‘well-travelled’ or, metaphorically ‘having many twists and turns’. If there is a better epithet for Locke, I can’t think of it. The utterly wonderful Sabetha, meanwhile seems to be a direct rebuttal of the character of Locke’s faithful wife, Penelope. Don’t get me wrong – Penelope is badass and I love her, and Sabetha definitely shares Penelope’s devious nature and ability to ward off irritatingly persistent men. But between Locke and Sabetha, Sabetha is the one with Odysseus’s spirit of adventure, whilst Locke is definitely the one who, if there was even the smallest chance that she would come back, would sit around at home for twenty years and wait for her, showing not the slightest interest in other suitors. I love that it’s that way round.

I think the thing initially that got me pondering these parallels with ancient Greek literature, is the way the theatre scenes unfold in the flashbacks in TRoT. What with the open air theatre, the use of masks on stage, the invocation of the gods before the play, the use of a Chorus, the festival atmosphere that surrounds the performance, the play’s high flown language, etc - Lynch has very explicitly based it all on a mixture of Shakespearean and Greek tragedy. There’s also the cathartic element to the play: it is surely no coincidence that Chains (/Lynch) sends teenage Locke and co to join a theatre troupe, the summer that they are all at each others' throats. He could have sent them anywhere - to a farm, to sea, to improve their language skills in Emberlain, etc. But he sends them to become actors. It is through their experiences on stage and off with the theatre troupe that Locke and all the young Gentleman Bastards are able to work through their tensions towards each other, and reaffirm their friendship. That’s the sort of ‘emotional cleansing’ or ‘catharsis’ that was supposedly achieved through Tragedy. (Not to mention the copious amounts of alcohol imbibed by various members of the theatre troupe – tragedies in Athens were originally staged as part of the Great Dionysia, a festival in honour of Dionysus, god of wine.)

The way Lynch uses time as well - the intercutting of past and present in all his books, and in particular the addition in TRoT of those almost timeless 'Interludes' of mental conversation between the Bondsmagi - it's very similar to the endless flashbacks and flash-forwards and out-of-time moments that make the Oresteia so confusing complex. I mentioned ‘timey-wimey’ already, didn’t I?

There are other motifs that match up as well. Prophecy is a BIG theme in Greek tragedy - think of Oedipus most famously, but also Hippolytus and many others. And yes, this is of course a theme that crops up in myths and fairytales from many other cultures. But the way it's used here feels very Greek. Or perhaps that’s just because I’m looking at it through the lens of the Oresteia, which relies heavily on the tragic prophetess Cassandra. But either way, the idea that Locke doesn't know where he came from, and that delving into the secrets of his identity can only lead to pain…well, Oedipus knows a lot about that. Oedipus's whole tragic downfall occurs because he doesn't know who he is. His very name is a pun on that fact. Like Locke, Oedipus is adopted as a child, and remains ignorant of his biological parentage until it’s too late. His fateful journey to Thebes, which leads him to kill his birth father and marry his birth mother, is precipitated after he learns of the prophecy that foretells that he will kill his father and marry his mother. So he leaves his adoptive home and his adoptive parents, and the very act of trying desperately to avoid his fate leads him to walk headlong into it. He only discovers this as, one by one, in a frenzied quest for the truth, he peels away the layers of his own identity.

There is another link as well – plague. Locke emerges as an infant from the ashes of the Catchfire plague, which leaves very few survivors. Patience claims that this plague is the result of Lamor Acanthus’ magical experimentation, making, if she is to be believed, Locke the unwitting cause of the plague. Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus opens with a deadly plague sweeping through Thebes, the cure for which is, apparently, to drive out the corruptive influence from the city. In his determined way, Oedipus gradually unwinds the tangled threads of his history, only to learn that he, accidentally patricidal and incestuous Oedipus, is the corruptive influence. He blinds himself (engraving his sins on his eyes?), and banishes himself.

I am afraid that the same thing is going to happen to Locke, now that he has this supposed prophecy of 'Key, Crown, Child' to worry about. (And he will worry about it, however much Jean tells him not to.) Well…not exactly the same thing, because I’m pretty sure incest is not on the cards here, but some terrible catastrophe (again) that Locke brings down on himself and his loved ones through trying to discover the ‘truth’ about his past. The Greek phrase 'Know Thyself' is carved on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the place of prophecy. Alongside the theme of hubris, it's kind of a central pillar of Greek tragedy - so many unfold because people do not truly know themselves, either in the sense that they don't know where they came from, or that they don't fully understand the nature of their relationships with others or their role in society.

Locke has a desperate need to know himself, to define himself. Which is, when you think about it, an interesting quality for an adept conman who can immerse himself in another identity at a moment’s notice. Or perhaps it’s not so odd – without a firm grasp on the Facts of his identity, he could lose himself entirely. So he thinks he knows himself: he is Camorri, he is a thief, he is a priest of the Crooked Warden and the garrista of the Gentlemen Bastards. He is Jean’s best friend. Whenever one or other of these truths is pulled out from under him, he crumbles completely. When Calo and Galdo and Bug are murdered, for example, and he believes that he, as their garrista should have stopped it – he sinks into a debilitating depression that is related as much to guilt and self-doubt as it is to grief. When he sees the vision of Bug which causes him to question everything he has ever learnt about the Therin gods, and his position as a priest, he is far more shaken by it than Jean is, though Jean is also a devout believer. And when he and Jean have their falling out on board the Poison Orchid, Locke’s whole existence seems out of joint because Jean has favoured someone else over him. What I’m trying to say is, Locke’s ability to function relies on his sense of self, and his sense of self relies on him holding certain facts to be true and immutable.

And so we come back around to Patience’s Lamor Acanthus story, which casts doubt on all those facts. In some ways, that’s worse than destroying them completely and replacing them with a new paradigm – right now Locke doesn’t know what to believe about himself. He’s caught between the Scylla of painful truth and the Charybdis of endless doubt, and it’s a dangerous place indeed. I fear that this lack of self-knowledge and determination to find definitive answers – combined with the innate hubris which leads him into trouble time and time again, and the Aeschylus-esque cycle of revenge that shows no signs of abating – I fear that this is going to push him into a discovery that he is better off without.