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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
(The narration shifts from Briseis’s perspective to the third person.) Patroclus, looking feral, returns to Achilles’s rooms and tells Achilles his behavior was “brutal.” When Achilles asks whether he means the pig comment, Patroclus snaps that he’s talking about Briseis. Achilles says, “At least she didn’t lie.” Patroclus points out that she didn’t say anything and demands to know what Achilles wants. Achilles replies that he wants an apology. Patroclus says that it’s ironic that between suave Odysseus and Ajax, it was Ajax who wounded Achilles. Achilles denies it, but Patroclus insists. Achilles asks how “she” was, and Patroclus asks what Achilles’s guess is. Achilles claims he acted as he had to. Patroclus says they should leave instead of doing nothing. He grabs his cloak to leave. When Achilles asks whether he’d like “company,” he says no—but Achilles can come.
Achilles believes that Patroclus is criticizing him for rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of his daughter in marriage, when in fact Patroclus is criticizing his “brutal” claim that he doesn’t care whether Agamemnon rapes Briseis to the point of extreme physical injury. Achilles’s misunderstanding—assuming the point at issue is about insults between men, not an insult to an enslaved woman—shows his obsessive focus on masculine honor and his inability to see Briseis as a full human being, even as he praises her for not lying about Agamemnon raping her. When he asks after her, he doesn’t even use her name, calling her only “she”—and immediately excuses the effects of his behavior on her, as if defending his honor required making light of her rape by Agamemnon.
Themes
Patroclus and Achilles walk through the Greek camp. Achilles, trying to make up, puts an arm around Patroclus’s shoulders. Patroclus flinches but lets him. When Achilles sees how close the Trojans are camped to the Greeks and how many Trojan fires there are, he’s stunned. Achilles and Patroclus walk back to their compound. Patroclus says he’s going to bed, as they might do battle tomorrow. When Achilles insists they won’t, Patroclus says they might if the Trojans burn Achilles’s ships—and shuts his door in Achilles’s face before Achilles can snap at him for “insubordination.”
Up to this point, Patroclus has largely accepted his subordinate position in Achilles’s household, though both men were born Greek princes. Yet the combination of Achilles’s refusal to fight to defend the other Greeks and his dehumanizing treatment of Briseis, whom Patroclus considers a friend though she is an enslaved woman, pushes Patroclus toward “insubordination.” Patroclus’s reaction here shows his frustration with Achilles’s totally individualistic concept of honor and his failures of empathy.
Themes
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