The Measure

In The Measure, Nikki Erlick uses Greek mythology in a variety of ways to deepen the meaning of the text. As people debate the mysterious origin of the boxes, the novel immediately draws parallels to Greek mythology: “‘Then maybe it’s God.’ The man shrugged. ‘Or multiple gods. The ancient Greeks believed in the Fates, right?’” (18) This connection continues throughout the novel—public interest in Greek literature and mythology increases after the arrival of the boxes:

She […] slipped past the table of popular titles up front, where The Iliad and The Odyssey had both taken up residence in recent weeks, thanks to renewed interest in Greek mythology and the Fates, alongside a cluster of self-help books and meditations on mortality by doctors, philosophers, and theologians (54).

With this direct reference, Erlick draws the reader’s attention to the ways that concepts from Greek mythology are layered throughout the narrative.

Most notably, the strings themselves recall the story of the Fates, or the Morai, as they were known in ancient Greece. The Morai are responsible for determining an individual’s fate, or destiny, which takes the form of a thread. According to mythology, there were three Fates: Clotho, the spinner of the thread, Lachesis, the allotter, who measures it, and Atropos, the unturning, who is responsible for cutting the thread, and thus ending the individual’s life. Erlick’s pre-cut strings, delivered as if by mail to each person’s doorstep, gestures toward this ancient story while maintaining a distinctly modern character.

While reminiscent on the one hand of something as modern and mundane as an Amazon package, the boxes themselves also point toward Greek mythology. The boxes are mysterious, their contents unknown, and their appearance ominous. In this way they suggest a connection to the myth of Pandora’s box, another container whose contents are mysterious, tantalizing, and dangerous. According to the myth, Pandora was the first woman in the world. The gods gave her a box (or jar), telling her that it contained a gift from each of them but that she must never open it. When, predictably, she opened the box, she inadvertently released illness, hardship, and other evils into the world. However, left in the bottom of the box, after the evils had escaped, was Hope.

A depiction of Pandora opening the box appears in the novel as a graffiti mural in Central Park:

[There was] a black-and-white mural of the mythical Pandora, crouched over her opened box. It was too late, the contents of the infamous chest—shadowy spirals and demonic faces—had already been released into the world, crawling upward along the edge of the wall (254).

Ben sees the mural on his way to the place where Hank was shot. On his return, however, when Ben returns to see the mural again, he notices that “[o]nly a small section of the box’s interior had been left visible by the original muralist, but it was here, in a dark corner of the chest, that a second artist had come along and inscribed a single word, Hope.” (257). Although this myth is well-known, the presence of hope in the box at the end is often left out of modern retellings. The phrase “Pandora’s box,” in fact, has come to serve as a common expression for questions that are better left unasked—a modern usage in which the myth’s ambivalent ending is forgotten entirely. The Measure, however, uses the gift of hope to underscore the overall tone and meaning of the novel, which explores all the difficult questions surrounding the strings, but also ends with a message of hope.