My wife got me one of those word-of-the-day desk calendars
for Christmas, where you tear off the sheets each day. I love a thing like
that, because not only does it teach me new words, but it reveals how many
words I already know, giving me a nice sense of superiority. A month+ in and it’s
been about 50-50 so far in terms of new-to-me words and old favorites.
One word I learned was the January 29th word, “thanatology,”
which is defined in the following way:
“The description or study of the phenomena of death and of psychological
methods for coping with them.”
On the flip side of the page it gives the derivation of the
word, and in the opening sentence it says “In Greek mythology, Thanatos is the
personification of Death and the twin brother of Hypnos (Sleep).”
Remove an “at” from that name and you’ve got the MCU’s most
epic villain.
I didn’t have any idea before then that the very name of
Thanos was meant to make you think of death, even if only subconsciously, and
only if you have a somewhat advanced understand of the linguistic roots of
words. To the extent that I contemplated the origins of the name at all, I
thought it was just a random, mildly ominous sounding name. Then again, if
Thanos had been a hero in the MCU, that wouldn’t have struck me as strange either.
(Not-so-hot take: Thanos is the hero of Avengers: Infinity War.
Discuss.)
If the Marvel comics writers new Thanos’ endgame (pun sort
of intended) when they first started writing him, it makes for an even more
clever long-term narrative ploy with a great payoff. Like, “Well of course
the guy whose name itself means Death is going to want to wipe out half the universe.
We should be lucky he doesn’t want to kill any more of the universe's innocent occupants.”
Probably don’t need to delve much deeper into it than this.
No comments:
Post a Comment