Drowning Olympus: The "God of War" Series as Inverted Flood Myth

By Dominic Palmer

“At any rate, if one adds earthquakes, famines, plagues, etc., it is likely, on present evidence, that ‘catastrophe’ can be considered as a universal or a near-universal theme in mythology” (Kluckhorn 272).

“We created a world of peace, a world of prosperity, a world that lives in the shadow and safety of my mountain. A mountain that has come to be the absolute measure of strength and power. Now, on this day, that power is to be tested. The mortal Kratos, seeks to destroy all that I have wrought.” (God of War III)

Poseidon's Death (Warning: this video contains graphic violence)

Near the beginning of God of War III, the ocean levels rise when Poseidon falls at Kratos’ hands, drowning everything and everyone beneath Mount Olympus. As Kratos’ assault on the Olympians continues, other gods fall, leaving the world covered in plague and darkness. On a literal level this final chapter seems but an epic tour of vengeance for series (anti-)hero Kratos, who Zeus realizes has become “death itself, the destroyer of worlds” (God of War: Ghost of Sparta). But a consideration of the cataclysm’s figurative import shows that the story concerns more than simple destruction; God of War III’s chaos instead represents a conclusion to the inverted flood or “catastrophe” (Kluckholn 272) myth suggested by the series entire. Enid Peschel claims that in the catastrophe myths of most cultures, “the deluge comes as punishment; the survivor is obedient to the deity; and recreation, established along the culture’s religiously described lines, reverts to origins” (Peshcel 117). The Old Testament’s tale of Noah exemplifies such a structure. As the story goes, an angry God cleanses the Earth of corrupt men but allows one righteous man (and his family) to survive and propagate, thereby inspiring future generations to strive for piety. In effect, Kratos’ role and actions throughout the God of War series turn this traditional structure on its head.

The gods atop Mt. Olympus

In the series’ first game (chronologically, not developmentally), God of War: Chains of Olympus, Kratos has “pledged himself as champion to the gods of Olympus” (God of War: Chains of Olympus), who have promised him freedom from his sins in return for his service. Athena asks him for “unquestioning obedience” (GoW: CoO) and Kratos obliges, beginning a grueling quest to save a kidnapped Helios. At this point he seems to exemplify the role of the flood myth’s pious man—a character who, as posited by Enid Peschel, is central to the flood myth, where the only survivors are ones “obedient to the deity” (Peschel 117). Yet early on, it is clear that Kratos stands in opposition to such traditional obedient figures. For instance, Charon initially suggests to Kratos that “we are both slaves to the Olympians,” and the titan Atlas informs him he that has forgotten his proper relation to Olympus. He asks, “What good is the promise of an Olympian?” prompting Kratos to admit, “It is all I have” (GoW: CoO). Indeed, it is but the promise of obedience that remains, not obedience itself. Kratos even confides to Eos in the sun temple that he feels he has become “but a slave to Zeus and Olympus” (GoW: CoO). As early as this point in the game we can see, therefore, that Kratos’ opinion of the Olympians is jilted and skeptical, making him unlike the blindly obedient religious figures central to previous flood myths.

In God of War, the next game sequentially, Kratos sees for the first time the prospect of freedom from the gods—a freedom foreign to the relatively powerless characters in other catastrophe myths, where the deities doling out punishment seem omnipotent. With Kratos supposedly approaching the end of his service to the gods, Athena promises him that, should he save her city from Ares’ siege, the gods will finally forgive him. Kratos then seeks out Pandora’s Box so that he may kill Ares and prevent Athens’ destruction. When he succeeds, it seems that he has both prevented catastrophe and, for the first time, escaped the gods’ control, as he has killed his former master, one of the Olympians.

Zeus vs. Kratos

But Ares’s murder and Athens’s salvation belie a dark conspiracy; the murder does not yet signal the series’ irrevocable change in the relationship between gods and men, as the other Olympians desired Kratos’ victory all along. Because they remain in control of Kratos (and never actually grant him freedom from his sins), the balance of power does not yet shift. His continuing inequality becomes all the more clear at the beginning of God of War II, when Zeus revokes the godly powers temporarily granted to Kratos and kills him. Explaining that Kratos could have kept his powers, had he made choices more wisely during the events of God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Zeus places the blame for Kratos’ misery on Kratos himself. But Kratos describes the situation far more accurately, saying, “A choice from the gods is as useless as the gods themselves” (God of War II). Vowing revenge on Zeus, he miraculously escapes Hades and seeks to murder the Sisters of Fate—the only avenue by which he can gain true freedom from the gods. When he succeeds in killing the deterministic Fates, he finds himself finally independent. Without their ability to control all mortals’ destinies, Kratos can act outside the gods’ will and lead an assault on Olympus. This begins the traditional myth’s inversion where a mortal, rather than a god, initiates a worldwide deluge.

In God of War III, the mortal-led cataclysm begins, strongly distinguishing this tale from the myths where the “ineptitude of humans” causes the flood (Birrell 216). Kratos pledges during God of War II’s conclusion to “bring the destruction of Olympus” (GOW II), a “punishment” (Peschel 116) for the gods rather than mortals. In the third game he makes good on his word, tearing through gods and titans alike, all of whom he sees as symbols of an archaic social and religious order. Each of these deities’ deaths results in worldwide catastrophes, ridding the world of Olympus’s remnants and allowing for a new order, rather than recreating “the culture’s old religious system” (Pescher 118). The rage flooding Olympus and the cataclysm left in Kratos’ wake thus conclude the series-long inverted deluge myth.

Zeus looking upon the destruction

God of War’s catastrophe motif represents the slow death of the religious order, as well as the death of all superior and deity-like beings. While other stories often feature one pious man’s survival above the flood, Kratos, feeling he has cleansed the world both within and without after ridding the world of Zeus’ tyranny, commits suicide atop Mount Olympus. This final violent act emphasizes the anti-religious cleansing, leaving humanity free from the gods’ oppression. Furthermore, beyond simply preventing the otherwise infinite parricidal cycle of godly violence (i.e. a son of Kratos would eventually then kill Kratos), this final sacrifice also suggests that a less brutal, more secular age may finally emerge, one in which the will of humanity will take the place of the destructiveness of nature to serve as a mechanism for new social change.

Sources

Birrell, Anne. “The Four Flood Myth Traditions of Classical China.” T’oung Pao, Second
         Series, Vol. 83 (1997), pp. 213-259.

God of War. March 22, 2005. Sony Computer Entertainment. June 2011.

God of War II. March 13, 2007. Sony Computer Entertainment. June 2011.

God of War III. March 16, 2010. Sony Computer Entertainment. June 2011.

God of War: Chains of Olympus. March 4, 2008. Sony Computer Entertainment. June 2011.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta. November 2, 2010. Sony Computer Entertainment. June 2011.

Kluckhorn, Clyde. “Recurrent Themes in Myths and Mythmaking.” Daedalus, Vol. 88, No. 2,              
          Myth and Mythmaking (spring, 1959), pp. 268-279.

Peschel, Enid Rhodes. “Structural Parallels in Two Flood Myths: Noah and the Maori.” 
          Folklore, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Summer, 1971), pp. 116-123.