There is a peculiar silence that fathers leave behind, whether by their absence or their muted presence. It is a silence that lingers in the air, like dust particles caught in a sunbeam, suspended, unyielding. My friend’s father existed as a mirage, always shimmering on the edges of his life, a figure conjured more from need than from fact. Mine, on the other hand, was fixed, almost oppressively so—a mountain on the horizon you could neither climb nor avoid. Between us, we share the same myth retold differently: fathers who were less men and more myths themselves.
Mythology, after all, has always been a way to explain the inexplicable. Freud saw the father as the original totem, a locus of fear and law, the one whose presence defines the tribe—or the family. Yet, myths are also prisons, just as the labyrinth was for the Minotaur. The father’s role is carved into the stone walls of this maze, less flesh-and-blood man and more an abstraction of power, morality, and dread. It’s no coincidence that we cast God, too, in this mold: an omnipresent, omniscient force who demands reverence and imposes order.
The labyrinth in the myth of the Minotaur is more than a structure; it is a state of being. To be inside it is to wander, to search, to fear the beast lurking in its shadows. The Minotaur, half-man and half-beast, is less a monster and more a question: what happens when the boundaries between human and animal, love and violence, father and son blur? Theseus’ journey into the labyrinth was not just a battle but a confrontation with a legacy. To slay the Minotaur was to untangle the threads of his own narrative, to escape the maze not only with his life but with his identity intact.
And yet, what of the Minotaur himself? What of the creature trapped within a story he did not write? The beast in the maze is both victim and villain, as are fathers in the myths we weave around them. My friend’s father—a ghost, a phantom—was, perhaps, trapped in his own labyrinth of expectations and failures. My father, so present as to be immovable, seemed at times like the Minotaur himself: fearsome, unapproachable, yet pitiable in his confinement.
Religion, like mythology, offers a blueprint for navigating these mazes. The fear of God—the ultimate father figure—mirrors the fear of the father. Both demand something of us, something we can never quite name. To fear God is to fear judgment, to fear the weight of failing to live up to a divine or paternal standard. It is no wonder, then, that the labyrinth looms so large in our collective psyche; it is the perfect metaphor for the winding paths we take in search of understanding, absolution, and freedom.
But the myth doesn’t end with the labyrinth. Theseus emerges, yes, but not without consequence. The maze leaves its mark. The father’s shadow lingers, as shadows do, long after the man himself has faded. The Minotaur is slain, but the question remains: was it the beast we feared, or what the beast represented? Was the maze meant to entrap the creature, or to confront us with ourselves?
Fatherhood is its own kind of maze, one that is never fully navigated. My friend and I, each in our own ways, have wandered its corridors, stumbled over its uneven stones, searched for the elusive exit. And in the process, we have learned this: the labyrinth is not just something we are born into but something we carry with us. The Minotaur, too, is not simply an adversary to be vanquished but a part of ourselves we must reckon with.
To live is to run through the maze, to trace its spirals and dead ends, to face the shadows that move within it. To understand our fathers, to understand ourselves, is to accept the labyrinth not as a trap but as a journey. And perhaps, when we reach its center, we will find not a beast but a mirror.
A Estrangeira 