Myth and Meaning in Stephen O'Connor's Ziggurat

Certain themes run through most mythologies - themes that transcend culture, country and religion. From the story of the Tower of Babel to the hubris of Oedipus; from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, to the myth of Beowulf and Grendel, we seem to like stories about people confronting forces that are greater than they are.

Recurring anxieties underlie many of our mythologies: how can we answer unanswerable questions if we are the most powerful and intelligent agents in our world? And if we're not the most powerful and intelligent agents in our world, then what, if anything, is greater than us; and if such an entity exists - how do we conquer, confront or understand it?

Stephen O'Connor has just published a story In the June 29, 2009 issue of The New Yorker called Ziggurat. The ziggurat is a Mesopotamian pyramid with steps leading upwards to the pinnacle and steps leading downward on all sides; the structure of O'Connor's story seems to be based on just this type of architecture.

The story begins with an unnamed girl sitting in a rec room playing video games while a Minotaur watches her by the pool table. Everything in the first paragraph has the aspect of gaming: there are the video games on the computer (a world of its own), the pool table, and finally the Labyrinth where the Minotaur encounters the girl. The reader isn't sure immediately what's game and what's setting.

This is the first act of the story, where Minotaur and girl play a zero-sum game - a game where each dances curiously around the other. The girl doesn't understand why the Minotaur doesn't eat her; she's been resignedly expecting him to do just that; the Minotaur, for his part, hasn't encountered a victim quite as resigned as this girl before, which is why he's hesitant to eat her; the only option remaining for them is to form a friendship.

When the Minotaur asks her about the video games she's playing, she describes them as "disappointment games." Even her favorite, "Ziggurat," a game re-enacting the building of Babel, is a disappointment game:

"You're supposed to build the Tower of Babel up before God knocks it down."

This is essentially the game she's playing with the Minotaur. The Minotaur believes he is the largest and most powerful agent in his environment; by the end of the story he will be almost minuscule, but he will also be profoundly changed by his relationship with this girl.

O'Connor's story borrows freely from familiar myths to construct this highly unusual (especially for The New Yorker) story about learning humility and empathy. Before the girl's appearance Minotaur's murders have no moral resonance with him one way or the next. He gets hungry and so he eats; simple as that. (Except for the fact that he's "the agent of his own appetite") But after she disappears his vocabulary expands. He begins to understand loss, shame, joylessness and regret. The Minotaur is becoming more and more like the humans he used to disdain. This is when the Minotaur attempts to build his own Tower of Babel. Does this desire to know more of his world come from the girl's suggestion that there is a possibility of escape? Who is the blue-faced man, and why does he seem to have power over the Minotaur? Is there some force beyond the Minotaur more powerful than he is? This mythological possibility of another world becomes the apex of the story; he builds a ziggurat, only to find himself in a world of plaster - everything from here on out will only serve to prove just how small he is.

O'Connor's a very effective writer, although sometimes his prose comes across as a little quaint and cutesy, especially his repetitive use of onomatopoeia:

"She didn’t even glance away from the screen. Just: twitch, twitch, twitch, clickity-clackity-click, click-click-click. “Oof !” she would say. “Oh, my God!”

To me, this kind of prose is highly distracting, though I suppose another reader might find it fun and charming - disarming, even, which I assume is how O'Connor intends it. There are also moments where O'Connor's choppy sentences and his odd insistence on beginning sentences with conjunctions also distract. These are small issues, however, with an otherwise engaging and thought provoking story, that I'm sure I'll be thinking about for a while.