Why couldn't Chihiro look back until she had crossed through the tunnel?

It's been a long time since I watched it, watching it now actually but still at the beginning. The "don't look back" comes from a few stories or myths I recall.

The one I remember is from Greek mythology. Eurydice and Orpheus. Eurydice was the wife of Orpheus and she ended up in hades somehow, I forget the details. But Orpheus went to hades to get her, and she was allowed to follow him out as long as he didn't look back until he reached the exit of hades and returned to the grounds of earth. She was to follow behind him. If he looked back she would be lost to him forever.

On the journey, she was so quiet he wasn't even sure she was following him, and before the end he coukdnt help himself and he looked, just to see if she was really there. Sadly she was, and when he looked back, she disappeared, doomed to hades for eternity.


Look up the myth yourself, it's a good story.

She can't sacrifice the present and so her future by being struck in melancholy reverie of her old friends, either in the bathhouse or at her old school. Only by keeping her gaze firmly forward until she has cleared 'the tunnel' of the sadness she began the movie with can she look back at what she has sacrificed so as to move forward with positivity.


🇦🇺 All the little devils are proud of Hell.