In War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg uses an ancient Greek myth to reflect the inner and outer turmoil of his main character, Ray Ferrier, giving depth and breath to a tale originally designed a commentary of 19th Century social conditions.
Although Spielberg stays loyal to the original novel in the surface plot, he manages to convey the Classic Greek tale of Perseus' hunting down the evil Medusa, creating a commentary of social conditions in the 21st Century.
For those unfamiliar with the tale, Medusa was one of three Gorgons whose hair was turned into slithering snakes and whose stare turned people who looked upon her face into stone.
Perseus - the grandfather of Hercules - set out with the help of the Greek Gods Athena and Hermes - to rid the world of this evil.
Perseus with the aid of gifts from the gods, particularly a polished mirror-like shield that allows him to look in Medusa's features without turning him to stone, manages to cut off Medusa's head using a blade also supplied by one of his colleagues.
Ray accomplishes a similar feat when aided by his daughter and son, and a slightly made ambulance driver manages to hide from and then cut off the head of an alien's probing device. But in this case, Ray used a mirror as a shield against the Alien Medusa, instead of the shield as a mirror. One myth has Perseus losing one of winged shoes in his flight from the sisters of Medusa seeking to avenge her death. In War of the Worlds, Ray or rather is daughter, loses her shoe in such an escape.
Athena in the original myth is depicted as Perseus' chief advisor, someone without whom the killing of Medusa would not have been possible. In War of the Worlds, the Dakota character as Ray's daughter plays that role.
Even the use of blood has similar roots in the myth and the movie. The blood from Medusa's severed head in one version of the myth falls to the ground and turns into serpents, a kind of depiction of red weed.
Medusa is often depicted in Classic Mythology as the devourer of life, someone surrounded by serpents, and reflects a major social change during the Classic Greek era when the modern concept of man as the head of his house. Medusa, once believed to be a great woman role model because the symbol of a nagging wife and the goddess of death. She was turned from beautiful to a horrid ugly monster.
As in other films, Spielberg uses myth to provide us with a body of symbols that both enhance the inner and external struggles of the film's hero. In this case, Spielberg uses the myth in two ways to give depth to the external monsters that rise out of the earth to begin slaughtering human kind, and to reflect the turbulent struggle the main character is having with women. Ray must slaughter the symbolic monsters without in order to overcome some interior struggle with the female half of the human race.
When Ray's boss says in the opening moments of the film, "Do you know what your trouble it, Ray?" and Ray answers, "I know a couple of women who can tell you," we are introduced to one of the key themes of the movie.
Ray, a somewhat macho dock worker from Newark's Iron Bound section has personal demons to slay - an internal medusa that is reflected in his inability to maintain a mature relationship - and external demons, in the alien, Medusa like monsters who tear up the scenery.
By use of symbolic representations from the myth, Spielberg is able to tie the inner and external conflicts so that they reflect each other, and take stock on the social order that male society adopted from the Greeks.
A few decades before the birth of Christ, Greeks began to rewrite the mythic stories in order to wrestle control of family and society out of women's hands. Goddesses like Medusa who had become great role models for powerful women were turned into evil crones. The new emerging Greek father figure was a man with unlimited powers over those in his family, especially over his son, who duty was to obey their fathers' wishes without question. While Ray may believe in this myth of a powerful man, he is unable to get his son to obey him and sees his wife as the perpetual nag.
Medusa in this recreation was a beautiful mortal who was violated by one of the gods inside the temple of Athena, who was so angered by the outrage that she turned Medusa into the snake-headed witch that plagued mankind. This may be reflected in the Newark scenes with the destruction of the church. This is a bit ironic since in some myths, Medusa is depicted as the guardian of cities.
Perseus, the hero of the ancient myth, is a Moses like character who was along with his mother cast to the sea in a box for fear that he would eventually fulfill a prophesy and kill his own grandfather. The box was recovered by kindly strangers who raised Perseus.
It may only be a coincidence that Ray, the film's version of Perseus, makes his living by perpetually plucking containers or boxes off ships that have just come in from overseas.
Like Medusa, Ray's ex-wife is pregnant at the story's start, and rags Ray7 about the lack of food in the house for kids, the filthy unkept conditions in which Ray lives, and the need to pay more attention of the homework the kids do.
One of the symbols of Ray's independence in the film is the Mustang he drives and the other one which he is working on in his garage - the engine in his kitchen. In the Greek myth, when Perseus' kills Medusa, Pegasis, the winged steed, is born from her blood and serves as Perseus' steed.
In War of the Worlds, Medusa seems to serve as both Ray's internal demon - the nagging wife and his lack of responsibility - and the external monsters that are attempting to take over the planet.
Many of the symbols of Medusa can be associated with the aliens from the serpent like arms to the beams that shatter people and things into dust. In the myth, Medusa is closely associated with snakes, not merely as strands of her hair, but coiled around her arms and legs. Nearly everything about the alien machines has feminine features from the breast like baskets in which the captive humans are kept (but instead of succoring these children, the beasts sucks out their life blood) to the womb like aperture into which Ray is eventually sucked. Strong women in the revised Greek philosophy devour men as the monsters do in the Spielberg movie.
In the film, flocks of birds are seen frequently in connection with the alien machines. In the myth, Medusa is often shrouded in birds, who frequently occupy her shoulders and arms.
The Medusa myth and War of the Worlds may have even more in common that merely the constant symbols Spielberg spews throughout the broken landscape. Greeks in reinventing the myths, claimed that evil monsters sprang up out of the earth, in much the same way as War of the Worlds monsters did, creating a kind of savage earth mother which gives us the most vile and violent part of nature, but one that can be found inside ourselves. The Perseus story - as in War of the Worlds - is a battle by the hero to overcome his own base nature in order to evolve into a higher being.
As depicted in a previous essay, the Ray that makes an appearance at the end to deliver Dakota back to her mother, is a different Ray, one that has rid himself of demons by going through hell to kill it, and by killing the external Medusa, Ray has become mature enough to rid himself of the myths concerning the internal Medusa - so can face his ex-wife as a mature adult for the first time.