The original noder writes truly that hope was the last thing left in
Pandora's Box after
Pandora loosed its
evils on the world.
However, I have been informed by my friend Alfred (motto: "getting a
classical education so you don't have to") that in the
paradigm of the ancient
Greeks, hope was not exactly the cheery
thing with feathers we associate with the word today. What was left in the box might better be described as "
delusion."
That
humans were left with hope was actually an extra, super-
cruel punishment from the
gods -- it made them continuously believe that they could somehow
survive in their ruined world.
This is not to say that the modern interpretation of the
myth is
inappropriate. These
archetypal stories always have a
koan-like
aspect, a measure of
meaning that is not
implicit, but touched off in the reader by their powerful and ageless
imagery. Just as
Camus turned
Sisyphus from a suffering wretch into a symbol of
humanist/
existentialist
transcendence (see
The Myth of Sisyphus), we are free to recast the ultimate evil in Pandora's box as our great
friend.