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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silence of the Girls, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mythology and Oppressed Perspectives
The Effects of Misogyny
Honor and Violence
Slavery and Dehumanization
Grief and Revenge
Summary
Analysis
More and more rats die. Myron, responsible for order in the compound as well as on the ships, finds the rat corpses infuriating. Then the dogs and mules start dying too. The soldiers start burning the animal corpses. One night, as Briseis is pouring Myron’s wine, a rat runs across the hall floor, spits blood, and dies. Myron stands, glares at Briseis, and says “you” accusingly. Then he picks up the rat corpse and throws it outside the hall. Later that night, after Achilles has raped her, Briseis prays again to Apollo.
Myron’s accusing “you” to Briseis hints that he somehow intuits she has been praying to Apollo for plague. That Briseis is in fact doing so emphasizes how natural the impulse is for revenge in cases of violent wrong: Briseis’s male family members have been slaughtered and she is being regularly raped, so of course the Greek soldiers should assume she wishes them ill.
Themes
The rat corpses continue to multiply. The next night at dinner, Myron begins sweating and groping his neck and underarms. One man jokes about fleas. Myron stands and repeats, “Look at them,” clearly hallucinating rats. Then he collapses. Patroclus hurries to him. Achilles approaches the fallen Myron, touches his neck, and says to Patroclus, “Feel that?” Patroclus touches Myron’s neck in turn and replies, “Hard.” Four men carry Myron away, while Patroclus reassures the remaining men that Myron will be fine.
The bacterium that causes the bubonic plague spreads through rat fleas. The joke about fleas, combined with the dying rats, implies that the animals are dying of bubonic plague. The novel thus offers a naturalistic explanation for the plague, even as it leaves open the possibility that Apollo sent the plague—mixing scientific knowledge with the plague legend in the original myth of the Trojan War as recounted in Homer’s Iliad.
Themes
