Deconstructing the image of ‘God’: Re-visiting Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Vyasa’s Mahabharata

Currently, it has been 141 years since Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) and 59 years after J. Hillis Miller declared God as an object of only ‘thought’ in his The Disappearance of God (1965). The deconstructive analysis of God will not negate the divinity; rather, it will aim to uncover the Almighty’s diversity. In literature and philosophy, God has been represented in various ways. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poet shows another side of God, who is kidnapping and raping the mortal girls. Arachne, a mortal weaver, has been challenged by the goddess of weaving, Minerva. Minerva seems hesitant to acknowledge any other weaver but Herself, dissecting God’s ‘kind’ image. In Vyasa’s Mahabharata, Draupadi always referred to Lord Krishna as her “Sakha,” or loving friend, while Krishna called her “Sakhi.” In order to defend Draupadi’s honour during the trying time of the game of dice, Lord Krishna maintained his word and granted her an infinite saree that could never be taken off. This article will demonstrate that not only human beings are capable of committing the seven deadly sins, but also the gods are unable to escape from the sins, being confined to the ‘Satanical Pride.’ It will attempt to illustrate God’s humanlike characteristics by deconstructing His ‘Ideal’ image.