Behind Sin of the Fathers: William J Cagle on blending classical myth with family drama

What happens when you transplant ancient Greek mythology—replete with patricide, divine power struggles, and generational curses—to a grand plantation estate in the 20th-century American South? In his short story “Sin of the Fathers,” featured in the anthology Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us, author William J Cagle blends classical themes with dark sitcom wit and Gabriel García Márquez-inspired magical realism. Here, William offers insight into his literary influences (from Angela Carter to Shakespeare), the hypocrisies of divine authority, writing dark humor as a release valve for tension, and how family dysfunction can spark a full-blown revolution.

Q: “Sin of the Fathers” takes some very old ideas—patricide, sibling rivalry, family curses, revenge—and drops them into a very dysfunctional family that feels almost modern. What made you want to bring these mythological themes into a more contemporary setting?
A: One of the original influences for this story was the work of Angela Carter, one of my favorite authors of short fiction (Who I later learned taught Rick Moody who taught David Hollander who was a mentor and teacher of mine at Sarah Lawrence College). Carter takes a similar approach of taking very old ideas and bringing them forward to a more contemporary setting, only with fairy tales, setting some of her stories in The Bloody Chamber in a kind of gothic 20th century world that reframes the stories and amplifies their themes and their horror, all while centering the female characters and their experiences.

The Greek myths of their very human-like, flawed gods have always seemed to me primarily stories about family and about power. These are eternal themes that remain relevant in any age, but for my Olympus, I was drawn to the idea of a grand estate on a hill, somewhere in the American South. A plantation farm, sometime in the early 20th century. Perhaps the estate had once run entirely on enslaved labor, now it runs on sharecropping and peasant farm labor. Either way the family still owns the land, wields the power, and places their foot on the neck of the people that work for them. Some things change, others stay the same, from generation to generation or era to era.

Q: There’s a wonderfully heightened quality to the family drama in “Sin of the Fathers,” with old betrayals, shifting loyalties, power struggles, and secrets all coming to a head during a family gathering. What made you want to bring humor and wit into a story with such high emotional and personal stakes?
A: Humor has always been an important tool in my toolbox, when it comes to storytelling, and it’s also a big part of what I seek out when looking for good stories. Sit-coms are my number one guilty pleasure, and when I find ones I like, I watch them again and again, so that style of voice comes very easily for me. In this story especially, I think humor is a natural counterpoint to drama and horror. Just like horror, humor is about building and releasing tension, surprise, and diverting expectation, so I think dark humor is a very natural flavor pairing, like chocolate and peanut butter

Q: Your characters echo figures from Greek mythology, but they still feel like members of a recognizable modern family with their own grudges, loyalties, and power struggles. How did you go about creating the characters while working with those mythological connections?
A: The family dynamics came first. I’ve always been fascinated by the fundamental hypocrisy of the Greek gods’ claim to power. If they took the power through the conquest and defeat of the Titans (i.e. their parents, like Chronos) what legitimate claim do they have to that power? Why shouldn’t someone else have an equal claim to take the power from them by force, especially their own divine or partly divine children? The condition of bastardy (like Hercúle, being born outside of marriage, to a mother that isn’t Hera/Juno/June, and thus being half-mortal, or a demigod) provides one argument against their claim to power, but not, I think, a very strong one. These themes of legitimacy of right to rule, and conflicts between bastards and true heirs, are all constant themes within the plays of Shakespeare (see especially: Richard II, or Henry IV or King Lear) which I love to perform in and have always served as writing inspiration.

From there, I tried to focus on one key element of each character’s mythological powers and domains to include as a magical realism element. So “Zeus,” in addition to being the lecherous patriarch, can manifest the violence of his authority as his iconic lightning bolts. “Hercules” might not be fighting monsters or completing impossible labors, but the ground does shake beneath him, and he can bring down a wall with his fist, to manifest the strength of his revolutionary fervor. “Demeter,” as the goddess of the harvest, tends to the orchard, but also flowers grow up instantly in her footprints. “Hestia,” as the goddess of the hearth, cooks for the family, and the flames of the fireplace seem to rise at her beck and call. And June, cynical as she is, sees the truth of the house and the family from the start, with a kind of third eye, fitting well with her role as narrator. The way the elements of magical realism operate in this story draws inspiration from another of my favorite authors, Gabriel García Márquez.

Q: The family gathering in the story becomes the setting for old betrayals and resentments to finally boil over. What is it about putting a dysfunctional family in the same room that makes all those old conflicts so difficult to keep buried?
A: This is ultimately a story about revolution, the turning of the wheel from one generation in power to the next. It’s a revolt of children, and of the downtrodden (the unrecognized bastards of the patriarch, Persis who was forcibly married off to her uncle). These children had remained scattered, away from the house, in separate spheres. Hercúle and the other children saw the Anniversary dinner as an opportunity to organize, and ultimately to take action, since they knew they would all be in the same place for the first time in a long time. On the flip side, with all the parents in one room, we also see the worst of their traits emerge (disloyalty to each other, cynical warmongering, capital accumulation, the list goes on). Even June, our narrator, has had enough of her siblings’ and brother-husband’s debauchery, so it makes it easier for her to “pick a side” when push comes to shove.

Q: One of the ideas running through Mother Monster, Father Fiend is that family patterns can be passed from one generation to the next. “Sin of the Fathers” takes that idea in a particularly dramatic direction, with characters seemingly trapped in cycles that began long before them. Do you think people can actually escape the patterns they inherit from their families, or are we more likely to repeat them in different forms?
A: Hercúle’s first step in the process of overthrowing his father’s perceived tyranny is understanding the history of how his father came to power in the first place. Once the myth of divine authority is popped like a bubble, it can’t be easily restored. If his father could take power by force from his own father, what obstacle remained to prevent Hercúle from doing the same?

The problem of cycle, however, immediately presents itself. What justification other than force will this new generation have for maintaining their own power? Can the cycle be broken? June seems to believe no, imagining an endless future of revolution and restoration until the house burns down. She, however, is a cynic, and ultimately belongs to the old Order. The story ends before we see how Hercúle and the new generation will wield their power, so the fate of the house and the effectiveness of revolution are left to the reader to decide.

Q: What are you working on now, and what can readers look forward to from you next?
A: I have several long-form projects in the works, including several books within a secondary world high fantasy series, centering characters with different disabilities navigating a world where Pain is the source of magic power and climate catastrophe is shrinking the livable landmass.

Another project is a novella about a mailman delivering packages to increasingly strange and supernatural locations in post-liberation 1945 France, inspired by the actual letters home written by my Jewish great-grandfather. He was a New Jersey postal worker who was sent overseas to deliver mail to soldiers, and I became very captivated by his voice and his unique experience overseas, not on the front lines, but nevertheless witnessing the devastations fascism and total war had left behind in France.

I’ve recently been conducting a lot of historical research into the settling of California and the broader colonization of the West Coast and have been toying with a science fiction transformation of many of the strange, tragic, and unbelievable pieces of that long story.

You’ll be able to hear my voice as the narrator of the audiobook version of Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California by Bruce Neuburger, which is forthcoming.

Finally, I have several short stories currently out in Precipice Magazine, Triptych Journal, and Cauldron, a local San Francisco zine.

Would be remiss not to use this platform to say: Free Palestine, Reject AI, Reject Fascism. Keep on Reading your way Out!!!!
William J. Cagle

Author Bio

William J. Cagle (he/they) is an author of fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism. He received his MFA in Speculative Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and currently serves at the Managing Speculative Fiction Editor for Variant Literature. He has written for podcasts such as Season 3 of A Matter of Degrees. He has been an amputee since the age of seven and writes towards themes of disability and environmentalism. Currently he lives and teaches in San Francisco, California. You can find him in the Presidio with the frogs, and coyotes, and owls, and a cat named Peanut Butter.

Connect with the author

• Website
• Instagram
• Links to other works:
  • “Good News!” @ Precipice Magazine
  • “Event Horizon” @ Triptych Journal

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