When looking at modern adaptations of classical mythology Percy Jackson, God of War, and other more direct forms are brought to mind; The Lighthouse on the other hand, is not always viewed as a contemporary use of Ancient Greek mythos. The Lighthouse (2019) directed and written by Robert Eggers is an interpretation of Proteus and Prometheus as well as the Jungian archetype of the shadow and how it manifests.
The Lighthouse is set on a secluded island off the coast of Maine circa 1890, with Ephraim Winslow, a former timberman from Canada, doing a stint as a wickie (lighthouse keeper) under the veteran Thomas Wake. Winslow is then given grueling tasks every day yet barred from ever going to the lantern of the lighthouse himself. Winslow during an outburst, and even after the warning by Wake, brutally smashes a seagull against a boulder, an omen of bad luck to sailors. Immediately the wind drastically changes and a storm charges toward the island, preventing the tender from arriving to pick them up. The next day, Winslow discovers a mermaid on the beach who awakes and screeches, and with terror, Winslow then sprints back to their lodgings where Wake tells him that all the rations have been spoiled by the storm. The old man then states that the tender is not supposed to arrive the next day as Winslow believes, but rather that they have been stranded for weeks. They spend the subsequent nights drinking and alternating between affection and hostility, with Winslow even considering murdering Wake in his sleep. Winslow in a drunken stupor confesses his real name to be Thomas Howard, and Winslow was the name of the abusive foreman he let drown. Howard, in fear from a vision, tries to escape the island with a dory, when Wake destroys the boat with an axe. Wake then accuses the young wickie of going mad and that he was the one who actually hacked the boat. A large wave then destroys the lodgings and Howard finds in the water a floating log book, where Wake states Howard should be docked all wages as he is incompetent and a drunk. Enraged, Howard attacks Wake who switches forms from the mermaid, the human Wake, and a sea monster version of Wake. Howard attempts to bury Wake alive and is later attacked by Wake with the axe, yet Howard overpowers him and finishes the wickie. Howard then ventures up the tower, reaching the lantern room where the lenses bloom and he is engulfed in light and falls down the lighthouse. A hardly breathing Howard is then seen strewn across the rocky beach, nude, and with seagulls pecking his organs out.
Howard and Wake represent the mythological figures of Prometheus and Proteus respectively. Prometheus is the titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished by having his liver pecked out by an eagle for all of eternity while chained to a boulder (Hesiod, Theogony, 525-526) (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 1-11). In The Lighthouse, Howard symbolizes Prometheus’ plight and the rebellion against the forces above, in Howards case it is his rebellion against Wake as well as his demise that is an obvious echo of Prometheus’. In duality to Howard’s Prometheus is Wake’s Proteus. Proteus is the “old man of the sea” of the island of Pharos, the island that housed the Lighthouse of Alexandria, furthering the connection between Wake and Proteus (Homer, The Odyssey IV, 335 & 401). Proteus is the wise man of the ocean, but under the condition that he must be captured. In the Odyssey he is described
Hold him there despite his striving and struggling to escape. For try he will, and will assume all manner of shapes of all things that move upon the earth, and of water, and of wondrous blazing fire (Homer, The Odyssey IV, 419).
During his fight with Howard, Wake’s legs become seaweed and barnacle encrusted tentacles, similar to Proteus (Eggers, 90). Wake even mentions by name Proteus and Prometheus as he is buried by Howard, “O what Protean forms swim up from men’s minds and melt in hot Promethean plunder scorching eyes with divine shames and horrors” (Eggers, 93). Wake’s form of Protean advice being a warning of the fate that would befall Howard if he were to reach the lantern. Robert Eggers crafted these not so subtle references to its use of mythology not as a message but more so as the vehicle of the use of archetypes.
Carl Jung, psychoanalyst of the early 20th century, used archetypes to view the modern and classical worlds. In Jungian terminology, myths are the expression of archetypes in society and The Lighthouse can be viewed the same (Steven Walker, Jung and Jungians on Myth, 5). The film tackles the ideas of evil and loneliness through the Jungian lens of the Shadow. In Carl Jung’s later work of Aion, he explores what the shadow is within self,
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. (Jung, Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self, 8).
The shadow, to put simply, is the manifestation of the deep immoral qualities of a person. Lativian professor Robert Avens states, “Acceptance of the shadow involves suffering and passion of the whole man” (Avens, The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung’s Psychology, 204). To accept one’s own evils comes with the agony of the realization of one's true self, and this can be seen in Howard. Ephraim Winslow is an escape from his shadow, that of Thomas Howard, which only after enduring suffering at the hands of stranding and grueling labor, does he accept it. Wake on the other hand refuses to accept his own evil and thinks of himself as a righteous supervisor even when torturing Howard. Eggers uses isolation as a vehicle for the shadow to manifest and it is shown through the fates of each man driven to madness in their own right.
The Lighthouse uses its adaptation of myth as a vehicle for a Jungian psychoanalysis of its characters and how evil presents itself. Robert Eggers shows that the shadows are present in both characters, and they react to it differently with how they process their own seclusion on the island.
Works Cited
Eggers, R., Dafoe, W., Groff, L., & MacGuire, I. (2023). The Lighthouse Screenplay Book. A24.
Walker, Steven. Jung and the Jungians on Myth, Routledge, 1994. ProQuest Ebook Central
Hesiod. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia. Translated by Glenn W. Most. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
Aeschylus. (1990). Prometheus bound. Oxford University Press.
The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. (1919). Harvard University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1991). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Routledge.
Avens, Roberts. “The Image of the Devil in C. G. Jung’s Psychology.” Journal of Religion and Health, vol. 16, no. 3, 1977, pp. 196–222. JSTOR,