#this is just a lot of rambling about intertextuality. kinda. sorta.

[number5theboy]

it might be hard to pick, but what's your favourite greek myth parallel/reference/allusion in regards to five? (i hope i phrased that right lmao)

for me it's still odysseus because you know. metis and long journeys and inability to adjust to peace after a lifetime of war and being held captive by a woman and having "no name" to hold him back and being extremely arrogant and hypocritical yadda yadda yadda. (i like the sisyphus references too, but i dont really consider five to be an ~absurd hero~, especially after s3. he clings to meaning in the apocalypse but in the face of his existence turning out to be absurd he does give up, kind of).

Hey Anon, first of all, congrats on sending in probably my favourite ask I've ever received. I was genuinely so excited to answer this that I kept it for when I would be in the mood and able to savour it, and before I knew it, a month has passed, so sorry about that, I hope you'll see this. But now I've just come off making a mythology-centred Five-gifset and my mind is buzzing, so there will never be a better time.

I once did an entire, very self-indulgent gifset about figures in Greek mythology that Five reminds me off, because to me, he thematically fits into that kind of storytelling. Very powerful, very skilled, fatally flawed, fucks around and finds out, all that jazz. The fact the writers have made a dozen mannequin jokes and yet haven't tossed in a Pygmalion reference yet is baffling to me. But I think Sisyphus and Odysseus are the only direct comparisons made in the text, and I do love them both. Me elaborating on why both of them are really neat connections under the cut.

I agree with you, I like the Odysseus one better, mostly because it's a really satisfying comparison. Yes to everything you said, the combination of wisdom and cunning, the long journey motivated by finding his way back to his family, his inability to find peace once he'd gotten them back because his time away - both the erring and the fighting - changed him, the women that keeps him, the absence of a name, the arrogance, the hypocrisy. I'd like to add the reluctance to fight paired with a high level of fighting skill, the tendency to try and talk things out first, the ability to read people well, the way people around him tend to die, the fact that his fatal flaw is pride/hubris, a character paying for his transgressions.

It's a very interesting character to compare Five to, because Odysseus is definitely one of the most nuanced and most versatile characters from Greek mythology, and I like how much the two have in common. But what I find even better is that there are a few key differences that make Five more than just a superhero take on Odysseus. There's the obvious fact that Five got reverted back into a child, and that he started his journey a lot younger, so what he longs to find his way back to is a different version of family from Odysseus. Odysseus also has a certain amount of obedience to authority, he knows how things ought to go and primarily tries to operate within boundaries set, while Five is pretty much ungovernable, he is constant to question and defy authority. Five also has time-travelling powers and technically the ability to undo everything that has gone wrong, but he just doesn't manage, he keeps overestimating himself and making things worse, which adds to his pathos. They are quite similar, but there is just enough of a spin to Five where the comparison is very much warranted but not tired. It tickles that particular part of me that loved Odysseus at age 10 when I first learnt about Greek mythology.

As for Sisyphus...I'm kind of splitting this in two, one part about the Sisyphus from the original myths and one about him as an absurd hero because Camus be Camus-ing.

Sisyphus is so known for his eternal punishment, because it is truly a wonderful image for a neverending, meaningless task, that it tends to be forgotten what he did to deserve this fate. Sisyphus was sentenced because he cheated death, not once, but twice, by finding new ways to escape it. So when Five says, "I've cheated time so much, I guess I thought I'd somehow cheat death", that hits, first of all because the writers literally forgot that Five had already cheated death by rewinding time and saving his siblings and himself from their certain demise, and secondly because that realisation of one's own mortality is part of the Sisyphus myth, in my opinion. Fun fact, in some, non-Homeric versions, Sisyphus is said to be the father of Odysseus, so being a cunning dickhead who pisses off gods is apparently a heritable trait. This tidbit about cheating death, paired with the endlessly repeating punishment, which the show alludes to via world's biggest ball of twine (Five replying "seems pretty big to me" when Klaus says that he thought it would be a lot bigger is a moment that I hold very dear) is just a good bit to compare with Five. He technically cheated death by turned time forward and bypassing the death of the entire human race, he cheated death again by turning time backwards, and he keeps living despite everything. At the same time, he chases his obligations, trying to keep the world alive, and surviving, in a seemingly endless repeating cycle. I really like the allusion to Sisyphus too, because it too is very warranted but it's not just a direct adaptation with superhero veneer.

As for Sisyphus as an absurd hero...it's been a while since I've read Camus, but the fact that Five, right after comparing his obligations to his family to a ball he keeps watching roll down a hill, asks, "and what's the point?" does suggest that the writers did mean the more meaningless side of the Sisyphus myth, likely tinged by Camus and his eternal obsession with the absurd. As far as I remember, his take on the myth is that realising and acknowledging the meaninglessness trumps the absurd and allows to reach a state of accepting serenity. I think whether Five, specifically in s3, falls into the role of an absurd hero really depends on interpretation. He doesn't in s1 and s2, because his meaningless, ever-continuing task (working to save the world from an impending apocalypse) is pursued with no acknowledgement of the underlying absurdity of trying to save the entire world that keeps changing and slipping away. In s3, there's a shift. Five gives up. Kind of. Sort of. Not really. I don't know. To be an absurd hero, he would have to acknowledge the situation and still continue his task, content with what he is doing because he is aware of its meaninglessness. A key quote from Camus that I am absolutely nicking from Wikipedia because I am not re-reading that and do in-depth literary anaylsis for a throw-away line from a silly Netflix show, is that "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn". Five talks about fate in s3. He says that fate doesn't care for whether he is ready to face whatever it has in store for him, and then again, he tells Reginald that it's time they accept their fate and let the world end. And Five gives up. He stops pursuing the task...for a time. Because he was ready to let the world go and see what, if anything, is on the other side. Until the finale, where he is back in survival mode. He's the one to find the sigil, his decision is what ends the last guardian and culminates in Reginald (and Allison) resetting the world. So, does the act of giving up keep him from being an absurd hero? Or was that uptick, working towards saving it despite everything he knew, despite knowing it can't work out well, the action of an absurd hero? I don't know. Not quite, I think, because I don't think Five has ever reached that moment of contentment at the realisation of the meaninglessness of everything he's chased for his entire life. But it is fun to think about. I'm a bigger fan of using the original myth rather than Camus' interpretation of it, because that one was very much written with the meaninglessness of labour under capitalism in mind, which is not quite something that the Umbrella Academy is dealing with, Five even less, and I like the detail about cheating death being the thing that condemns Sisyphus to his endless, meaningless, repetitive task, and Camus doesn't delve into how Sisyphus came to be stuck on that hill.