What Strange Paradise

Content Warning: This Symbols and Motifs section contains references to distressing scenes, including the death of children.

Allusions to Greek mythology are a common motif in What Strange Paradise. Half of the novel takes place in Greece, presumably on the island of Kos, though the name of the island is never mentioned once Amir is there. Kos shares in Greece’s ancient history; ancient Koans fought alongside the Greeks in the Trojan War according to Homer’s Iliad. The name of the ship, the Calypso, is a direct allusion to another work by Homer, the Odyssey. Calypso is the name of a nymph with whom the hero Odysseus spends seven years, bewitched and distracted from his journey home. This foreshadows the illusory nature of the dreams that the voyage inspires in the refugees, developing the theme of The Limits and Possibilities of Escapism. The name “Calypso” also comes from the ancient Greek word for “concealed”; as the name of the human trafficking ship, it suggests both the vessel’s need to remain concealed and the lower-class refugees concealed beneath the deck.

Vänna’s surname, Hermes, is the name of the messenger god of the Greek pantheon. In addition to serving as a liaison between the gods and mortals, Hermes is also a god of boundaries, including the boundary between life and death. Hermes is sometimes referred to as Hermes Psychopompos, indicating the god’s role as a psychopomp, a spiritual figure who guides the human soul to the afterlife. If Amir dies in the wreck of the Calypso, then the “After” chapters represent the afterlife with Vänna Hermes as psychopomp for Amir’s soul, guiding him through various trials to the ferry that will take him across the water. In this context, the unnamed ferryman evokes the mythical figure of Charon, the ferryman who ushers souls across the River Styx in the Greek afterlife.

The ancient history of the island is a draw for tourism, the island’s biggest industry. Tourists come to “visit the ancient mountainside monasteries and the ancient ruins, to hunt for a nest of copper arrowheads or a poem chiseled into stone or perhaps even the remains of the island’s ancient dead themselves” (234). The Hotel Xenios, the center of tourism on the island, is named after Zeus Xenios, an epithet of the head god of the Greek pantheon that indicates his role as protector of guests and strangers. The hotel’s name thus evokes the theme of Differing Attitudes Toward the Stranger; ironically, the hotel’s wealthy patrons are hostile to the refugees who seek shelter on the island, though the guests themselves are foreigners as well.

Though it drives their economy, tourism is decried by some of the island’s residents as diluting the island’s ancient culture. Kethros, for example, feels “a kind of nausea […] to see how nondescript these foreigners and their money and their utter absence of culture have made his island, his people” (185). These changes, coupled with the constant arrival of new migrants, cause Kethros to think of his situation as a “punishment without end, whereby he is destined to spend an eternity a step behind the happenings of things, unable to preempt or even witness any event of import, only bob about helplessly in its wake” (199). This evokes the punishments of various figures from Greek myth, such as Sisyphus, who is damned for all eternity to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll down again, or Tantalus, who cannot slake his constant thirst or sate his unending hunger.