05 Jul 2022 (Last Modified 08 Jul 2022)
Eleven is the lead character in the Netflix Series Stranger Things. She has telekinetic and telepathic powers brought into focus by rage. I was watching Season 4 while starting Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad as part of my rereading the classics. Both myths ask the question of whether someone raised to be a weapon can find meaning in fulfilling their destructive purpose versus going their own way.
In the Iliad, Achilles fights for Agamemnon against Troy because, mindful of a prophecy, he chooses a short life of accomplishment over a long life of anonyminity. For Achilles, accomplishment is the glory of dying heroically in battle. Translations use the word glory, but I think the phrase “veneration, respect, and esteem of later generations” conveys the notion more accurately, even though more clunkily. The Iliad opens with Achilles’ temper flaring when Agamemnon and Achilles’ egos clash over dividing the spoils of war. Achilles retreats from the battlefield feeling that doing otherwise would detract from his honor, returning only when his soul mate Patroclus is killed while impersonating Achilles.
In Stranger Things, at least the canonical seasons 1-3, Eleven is portrayed as a weapon developed by the US government to assassinate people from afar. Her telekinetic and telepathic abilitys are displayed in demonstrations of rage.
Some of the similarities between Achilles and Eleven arise because each character’s story is being told by a skillful narrator. Both stories begin in media res.
Achilles and Eleven are both treated as weapons before they are treated as people. Achilles is fighting for the Achaean coalition, but the conflict with Agamemnon emerges because Agamemnon treats him as a military asset whose personal dignity is irrelevant.
Likewise, Eleven is raised in Hawkins Lab not as Jane Ives but as “011,” a numbered research subject. Her value to Brenner lies in what she can do rather than who she is.
This suggests a shared theme:
The hero’s first struggle is not against monsters but against institutions that reduce human beings to instruments.
That theme is arguably more central to Stranger Things than the supernatural plot.