Louise Glück's poem, "A Myth of Devotion," tells complex story that shows the comparison the idea of love rather than the love for someone or something. Glück uses darkness as a representation of love and freedom. The Greek god Hades shows love for a girl, Persephone, in an unorthodox way. Hades idea of love is represented through his darkness. Darkness commonly represents loneliness, rejection and restriction, but Hades uses darkness to show his love and passion to give Persephone freedom. He does not tell Persephone that he loves her and she will be protected, but instead he tells her, "you're dead, nothing can hurt you" to protect and show his love for her (46). Hades tried to create a world in which his love, Persephone, could have a perfect life but he slowly found out that his idea for the perfect world with love did not benefit Persephone. He finds the only way she can be unharmed is if she is dead and out of his control. He cannot control her and the world she lived in without flaws, but by putting her to death he freed her from his harm and proclaimed his love. He showed that he had love and passion for Persephone and he was strong enough to let her go. Hades created a new earth to show his love and passion for Persephone, where he began to lead her into darkness and eventually death because he truly loved her.
The poem starts out with a line about Hades feeling of love that shows his questionable thoughts about love: "When Hades decided he loved this girl" (1). Of course that seems unordinary, who decides they love someone? A decision means he might have been forced to love her. When a poem about love opens with those words, the lines indicates that Hades did not fall in love with a woman but instead he just chooses her. The connection or draw he has to "this girl" is unknown but it is not from his own feelings for her. The next line shows some dedication for her when "he built for her a duplicate earth/everything the same, down to the meadow,/but with a bed added" (3-4).
