Essay: Gods and Goddesses in Cupid and Psyche

In the story, Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche, gods and goddesses play some of the main roles. Although the story primarily involves Psyche, her path of life is heavily entwined with that of Cupid and Venus. In this week's story, I thought that the gods and goddesses portrayed were overall very cowardly. When one thinks of gods, strength and power typically come to mind. In this story, however, those characteristics were hardly prevalent.

One of the first examples of cowardice seen is Venus's jealousy of Psyche's beauty. A goddess shouldn't feel jealous and insecure because of the beauty of a human, yet Venus goes crazy at the thought of someone being more beautiful than her because that means that her beauty isn't the most incredible. A prime example of this is the reaction Venus has when she finds out people have been pretty much worshiping Psyche in Psyche's Beauty.

Another example of cowardice is Cupid's behavior after she finds out that he has been secretly married to Psyche. Instead of standing up to his mother for the sake of love, he goes and sits nursing his wounds in his mother's house while Venus searches far and wide for Psyche in order to punish her. Venus's outrage and Cupid's reaction can be seen in Venus and the Goddesses.

One final example, and probably the best one of cowardice, is the behavior of the gods that Psyche appeals to for aide. She appeals to several in order to gain safety and comfort because of Venus's persecution, but they all reject her because they are afraid to offend their fellow goddess. Instead, Psyche's help comes from ants, a reed, and a turret. The turret was the thing that surprised me most because it was the least alive out of all the things that helped Psyche in her quests (The Jar of Beauty). Why the insignificant characters in the story helped Psyche more than the powerful gods and goddesses did is something that I thought was interesting. It just proved that the Greek gods and goddesses weren't as mighty as they made themselves out to be.

(Venus assigning Psyche a task)

Overall, this story was a fine one, and the character development throughout was excellent. The main part of the story for me, though, was that gods and goddesses would be the best people for soap operas and reality TV.