echo and narcissus

The story of Echo and Narcissus comes from Greek mythology. I like how people give it a contemporary interpretation, often depicting a toxic relationship. 

Here’s the story: Echo and Narcissus are both cursed. Echo loses her voice and can only repeat the last few words of others, while Narcissus is unable to experience reciprocated love. When Echo first saw Narcissus, a beautiful man hunting in the woods, she fell in love with him at once. She stuck him around closely, her love for him overflowing, but she couldn’t express it because of the curse. Narcissus, meanwhile, saw his reflection in the water, unaware it was his own, and fell in love with it, but could never receive love in return. He withered away, eventually turning into a narcissus flower. Echo also faded away after, and became a rock.

A few years ago, I read a book about the narcissist and echoist dynamic in relationships. So I add a few my own interpretation I learned from this book to the illustration. The echoist doesn’t express their own needs, even when they’re not being met, and instead focuses solely on fulfilling the narcissist’s needs. That’s why I designed a knotted throat for Echo. On the other hand, the narcissist only cares about themselves, often manipulative, as they rely on others to boost their massive ego. In my depiction (P3), Narcissus is portrayed as large, while Echo is small. The curving lines around Narcissus represent his explosive ego. In real life, narcissists and echoists often attract each other, forming couples, though the relationship pattern is extremely unhealthy. I illustrated this dynamic by ending the story with Echo, as a rock, shrouded in the shadow of the narcissus flower, as if it’s a stable state for both of them.

Additionally, an interesting point is that, despite being at opposite ends of the personality spectrum, both narcissists and echoists share one thing in common—they lack self-coherence. To express this, I added a hollow in each of their bodies.