Labyrinth

Labyrinth - On the one hand, a no-brainer; on the other, some people need to be sent the definition of the word utopia.

Let’s start with the fact that in Greek mythology (that is, those old yarns that get drilled into children’s heads at school in countries with a good education system) there was a fella named Daedalus. Daedalus was Icarus’s father (the one who flew too close to the sun and got burned, but more on that in a moment), an architect and an inventor. Daedalus was talented, but also a teeny bit… small-minded. He murdered his nephew, Talos, because he was jealous. Over what? A woman, probably? Money? Fame? Looks? Heck no! He was jealous that Talos had invented the saw and the potter’s wheel. Since even back in ancient Greece murdering was rather frowned upon, Daedalus had to leg it out of Athens. He holed up on Crete, where his talents were put to use by King Minos (who, parenthetically, appears in Dante’s Divine Comedy as the one who sends sinners down to the lower circles of hell).

And finally, we’ve got Daedalus, we’ve got Crete, we’ve got Minos. So where’s the Labyrinth? Well, it went like this:

Minos: Hey, Daedalus. I’ve got this Minotaur here, a right louse, keeps eating people on me, could you do something about him?

Daedalus: Well, I could…

He probably wasn’t keen, but what could the poor sod do, in exile, at the king’s mercy - Daedalus got down to work and built - drumroll - THE LABYRINTH. A structure consisting of winding, seemingly tangled paths, corridors in which it’s easier to get lost than in IKEA. If such a labyrinth was well designed, then a whole one of those paths led from the outside all the way to the very middle. And if it wasn’t? Well… I hope you packed snacks.

And the thing with Daedalus afterwards was that the Greeks can into plot twists too - at some point Daedalus himself, together with his son Icarus, got locked up by Minos in that very labyrinth, and that’s exactly when they escaped from the labyrinth on wings made of feathers glued together with wax. How that ended for Icarus - we all know.