Hope In Mythology

Hope entered the world of Greek mythology with a shroud of paradox surrounding its meaning. Because Prometheus stole fire from the gods, Zeus sent Pandora and her famous box into the world to deliver revenge. Driven by curiosity, she disobeyed his order and opened the box, unleashing a myriad of hardships on humanity. When Pandora managed to slam the lid shut again, hope was the only thing still captive inside.

Menninger in his article “Hope,” in Bulletin Of The Menninger Clinic (1987), said that this raises an intriguing question. Is Pandora's box meant to suggest that hope is what we cling to in order to withstand misfortune? Or, on the other hand, was this meant to suggest that as part of Zeus's revenge, hope is the greatest hardship of all? According to Menninger, the ancient Greeks held a world view in which destiny was unchangeable. There is evidence in literature that in their fatalistic belief system, hope was a cruel illusion driving men to great lengths yet impotently failing to satisfy. Aeschylus referred to it as “the food of exiles,” and Euripides called it “man's curse.” The heroine of Sophocles' Antigone declared, "We are of the tribe that hates your filthy hope, your docile, female hope; hope, your whore..." (cited in Menninger, 1987).

Evidently, some of our ancestors in western civilization held definite, strong, and negative opinions about hope as a means to coping in life. Such a perspective is consistent, however, with a mythology that denied human efficacy in the world. That view demanded stoic fatalistic acceptance.