Three Golden Apples

As I began reading Hawthorne’s “The Three Golden Apples”, I found it interesting that the main character’s name is not revealed until almost at the middle of the story. To me this is important to mention because this story is about Hercules and I have never been a fan of Hercules. As a matter of fact, every time anyone would discuss Hercules and his story, I always avoided being around. I almost felt that Hawthorne tricked me into becoming interested in the story and then revealing Hercules name because he knew that otherwise this story would not have been of much interest to me. Not knowing much about Hercules and after completing the reading of The Three Golden Apples, it was of great interest to me to research the original myth in order to learn about him and to be able to compare and contrast to Hawthorne’s story.

The first and most significant finding to me was the fact that Hawthorne leads us to believe that Hercules is this great hero who is going around the world killing and cleaning the world of monsters and evilness. However, the original myth tells us that due to the fact that while Hercules was under a spell from Hera (Hercules father’s (Zeus) wife) he kills his wife and children. Once Hercules realizes what he has done, he asks Apollo for forgiveness and because Apollo likes him, he sends Hercules to serve Eurystheus, King of Tiryns. It is King Eurystheus who assigns Hercules ten labours (which later become twelve since in two of his labours Hercules is helped by someone else and due to the rules of these labours, they are to only be completed by Hercules alone) in order to gain forgiveness for killing his children and wife.

Another finding of great interest was that Hawthorne’s The Three Golden Apples is better known as Hercules’ Eleventh Labour. This is a labour that for some reason made no sense to me. Hawthorne’s reason as to why Hercules was after the three golden apples at first did not make sense but then after reading...