The tragedy of self-love (Literary Analysis about Narcissus and Echo from Ovid's book of poetry,

Metamorphoses.)

The story started from a charming nymph named Echo who was later punished by the greek
God Hera, being deprived her of speech, except for the ability to repeat the last words of another for
the reason of tricking her in able to avoid Hera to catch the affairs of his husband Zeus from the
other nymphs. She was later in loved with a conceited man named Narcissus who eventually
rejected her because of his unreasonable love to himself. In the end Narcissus died for the cause of
self lust leading him to drown himself with his reflection in the water, followed by Echo’s mourning
of not eating and sleeping which also caused her death.

From the myth, we can learn two different lessons from the two main characters, Echo and
Narcissus who were very opposite in terms of their behaviour who were perfectly a two sides of a
coin. At the very start of the story, it was very clear that Echo is a very caring character that she
even went to a point wherein she protected her fellow nymphs from the greek god Hera causing her
to be deprived of her speech. At the very end of the story, Hera also shown how she truly loved
Narcissus by mourning after his death that caused her to follow through. With this, we can see a very
negative effect of showing much care to others. Showing much concern that can lead ourselves to
unexpected incidents and showing much care that leads us to forget our self worth.

Secondly, it was also clearly portrayed that Narcissus only cares for himself, achievements,
and unreasonably high sense of self importance. Here in the real world, having a narcissistic
personality involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy
and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. This leads to an individual
to do things for only one goal, to be praised and a crave of always being the center of attention. In
the end, if the person feels that he or she didn’t meet the standards to shun he/she may experience
a “static sadness” causing grave mental and emotional instability causing depressions and worst,
suicide.

Caring means to show concern or kindness to others but it doesn’t mean that we come to a
point that we do things that can lead us to a situation wherein we face negative consequences. For,
example, if Echo have taught about her self priority considering that she is tricking a god. If done so,
she may not lost her ability to express herself through words and even maybe convinced Narcissus
to love her back. In the other hand, having too much self love leads us to be very self centered only
considering our own achievements and reputations leading a person not to notice how others value
him/her. For instance, if Narcissus didn’t become too conceited of himself, he may have noticed how
Echo loves him and also they have might have a “happily ever after story”. In the end to care means
to give love, to care for others but also considering yourself too.

This story serves as an eye opener to readers on how to balance giving care and love to the
people around you and also to have self worth at the same time. As the saying says “If you have the
ability to love, love yourself first”. Self love is the source of all our other love but let us not fall into
the trap of too much loving ourself like Narcissus and too much caring for others like echo.