When the work opens, Persephone is forced into something of an identity crisis due to her mother’s scheme to marry her to Zeus. Her former survival strategy of acting carefree and docile will no longer serve her larger goal of survival and independence. Hades, for his part, knows his role in the world, but finds himself conflicted about his dark public persona as he falls in love with Persephone. Ultimately, the two resolve their political dilemmas and also integrate their disparate selves, underlining that their relationship has brought them to a deeper self-understanding.

Persephone often contemplates the nature of myth and reality, both in her views of the upper city and the ways meeting Hades shifts her thinking. As she contemplates the statue of Hades, Persephone recalls that her life is also a cultivated performance akin to myth, “I force myself to act the part of the bright and sparkly daughter who is always obedient” (3). Persephone later reflects that her mother has turned her own strategy against her, saying, “I had no idea she’d use that same reputation to sell me to Zeus” (73). Her public persona has no agency, no will of her own.